Tag: palestine

Gen X, Israel vs. the US, Free Speech and the Roman Empire

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

For many obvious reasons, I have been thinking a lot about the world we live in today and the attitudes people have today.  It is truly a fascinating time to be alive in so many ways, not all of them good. 

I am part of Gen X.  I think this has a huge impact on the way I view the world.  I know it has a huge impact on how I both raised my children and how I see what is happening on college campuses, in the school systems, and in our country.  My generation grew up with freedoms that future generations didn’t have.  We were latchkey kids.  Most of our parents worked so after school we were free to do what we wanted. 

We didn’t have computers or screens.  There was no internet or cell phones.  We played outside until the streetlights came on.  Often times our parents had no idea where we were after school and that didn’t bother them.  We were independent.  We’d ride our bikes miles to get to other friends’ neighborhoods.  Our friends were our friends because of who they were.  Race, religion, sexuality didn’t matter.  My public school was closed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because 1/3 of the students and teachers were Jewish.  We were also closed the first day of deer hunting season because 1/3 of the students and teachers would be out hunting.  We were an eclectic group of people tied together.  I grew up with friends that came from family’s that had lots of money, those who were middle class, and those who didn’t have much money.  It didn’t matter.  Many of us are still in touch today.  We had real friendships that stand the test of time.

I remember when two of my childhood friends finally came out.  I, like the rest of our friends, were happy for them that they felt comfortable coming out.  We also knew they were gay when we were in elementary school, so it wasn’t a big deal and changed nothing as far as we were concerned.  We paid attention to who people were, not identity politics. 

As I look at the world today, I wonder how we lost that specialness from my childhood.  We are more divided than any time since the civil war.  We no longer focus on the quality of the individual but on what sets them apart from us.  We no longer care about who people are but rather how they identify.  When I was running nonprofits, my goal was always to hire the best person for the job.  It didn’t matter to me if it was a man or a woman, what their race or their religion was.  I didn’t care about their sexuality.  I wanted the best person for the job.  Today’s world seems to have more and more focus on the identity of the person as we focus on how we are different instead of how we are similar.

My older son is home for a bit and he took me to the Brightline station (high speed rail between Orlando and South Florida) so I can get my flight to Israel later tonight.  As we were talking, he told me about how many of his ‘friends’ he has had to block on social media because of how they were minimizing what Hamas did on October 7th and the need for Israel to eliminate Hamas to ensure the safety of Israelis and to free to people of Gaza.  It saddened me to hear this.  I don’t know how all my childhood friends feel about the conflict.  What I do know is that the vast majority of them have reached out in support of me.  I’m not asking them to believe what I believe.  I am asking them to be my friend and understand what I am going through as a Zionist and as a Jew since October 7th. 

I have long looked at the difference between Israeli youth and American youth.  From the time I first began to engage with 18-21 year old Israelis, serving their country in the IDF, and comparing them to my own college experience and then, when working on the University of Florida campus, with the UF students.  The similarities and differences were dramatic.  On the many Birthright Israel trips I staffed, we had 8 Israeli soldiers join us.  They were the same age as our students on the trip.  When they showed up in uniform, they were imposing.  Awe inspiring.  A few minutes after arriving, when they changed out of their uniforms, they became peers with our college students.  For the part of the trip they were with us, the similarities between the Israelis and Americans was striking.  When they first arrived and then, when they put their uniforms back on at the end of their time with us, the differences were striking. 

As a result, it didn’t surprise me that after October 7th, so many members of the IDF reserves showed up.  I read that Israel recalled 250,000 reserve soldiers and hoped to get 200,000 to actually show up.  Instead, 300,000 showed up.  People in America were doing all they could to get flights to go back and serve.  My friends who were retired IDF soldiers in the 40s and 50s showed up to serve.  They understood the existential threat that Hamas is as a result of October 7th.  Many of them went from protesting the Netanyahu government and some of their policy positions to a united front for Israel.  It was extraordinary but if you know Israel and Israelis, it was also not unexpected.

Last week, Douglas Murray, one of my favorite people to follow, was given the Alexander Hamilton Award for his ‘unwavering defense of Western values.’  His speech, in text here and the video of it below, was extraordinary. 

He spoke about “What it Means to Choose Life”.  He uses examples of both the Ukrainian people and Israeli people that make me long for the days of my youth.  Unlike our entitled generation that believes everything should be given to them, the people he talks about understand that everything comes with a price.  Unlike the protesting college students who think they have the right to incite violence, take over buildings, violate campus rules and break laws without any consequences, the people Murray talks about understand that everything comes with a cost. 

I want to be clear that I am not saying the college students shouldn’t protest.  Protesting, especially on college campuses, is a right of passage.  We have freedom of speech in the United States and as President Andrew Shephard says in the great movie, The American President,

“America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.” You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms.  Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.”

I disagree with the campus protesters position, and I disagree with how they characterize what is going on in Gaza.  I also firmly stand with their right to peacefully say it.  To gather in the public allowed space, in the manner that is allowed for everybody, and protest and hold signs, and say what they want.  Crossing the line to blocking Jewish students from going to class, harassing them as they walk on campus, threatening them, physically assaulting them, breaking the campus rules and breaking laws is not acceptable and comes with consequences. 

I laughed when the spokesperson for the student protesters who took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University asked for ‘humanitarian aid’.  Nobody was forcing them to stay in the building.  They could walk out of the building to get food and water any time they wanted.  The entitlement was absurd.  The students at Princeton who have decided to hold a hunger strike to protest the war in Gaza also made me shake my head.  Nobody is forcing them to go on a hunger strike.  They aren’t in prison or jail where their care belongs to the state and monitoring them is therefore the state’s obligation. They are choosing not to eat and as a result, they are responsible for their own health monitoring.  When they got upset that the University wasn’t monitoring their health as they were on the hunger strike, I thought to myself, ‘What entitlement’. 

I missed the protests of the 60s and 70s because I was too young.  I have had the opportunity to talk with many people who were part of those protests.  Every single one that I spoke with could tell me how many times they were arrested for their protest.  Every single one of them was proud of their arrest.  They knew there would be consequences for their protest, and they embraced it.  They didn’t whine and cry when the consequences came.  They had that level of conviction.  Today’s protesters seem to lack that conviction.  They want the best of both worlds.  They want to protest with no consequences and have the rest of the world cave to their demands because they protested once.  There are Universities who have done this, and I believe they will face long lasting consequences for doing this.  Others have held their ground and ensured that freedom of speech is protected, and inappropriate actions are held accountable and face consequences.  Those who have made the second choice are also bearing the fruits of this effort.  Their students feel safe.  Their graduations are not cancelled.  Their donors and alumni are not up in arms.  Their University Presidents are not having to testify in front of Congress about how they are failing to protect Jewish college students. 

Our world today has the ‘news’ in the ‘entertainment’ department.  We have the 24 hour ‘news’ cycle and each station has its own agenda to push.  The days of Walter Cronkite reading the news and you getting to interpret it are long gone.  Whatever channel you watch feeds you their narrative.  Critical thinking is dying.  Deep conversations are dying.

On this trip to Israel, one of my hopes and plans is to go visit my friend Mahmoud in East Jerusalem.  Mahmoud is a Palestinian Arab, and his family owns the big Palestinian bookstore in East Jerusalem.  When we met in November 2019, he pushed some of my buttons and challenged me to think deeper and in different ways.  In the 4 ½ years since we met, I have thought deeply on many things he said to us and very much look forward to sitting down for a few cups of coffee or tea, a bite to eat, and having a robust and deep conversation.  We won’t settle the conflict, but we can do our little part to build friendships, understanding, and perhaps share what we learn from each other with our other friends that might impact change.

I think that’s the most important lesson of all of this.  I remember hearing the stories of how President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill would argue and fight all day long and then go have a beer together.  Mahmoud and I will come from different points of view and will sit over coffee and talk and share.  Even as I write this, a friend reached out to share information I wasn’t aware of and it changed my mind and I went back and edited something that I wrote as a result of this new information.  We need to find a way to get back to that being the norm.  Yelling at each other, only speaking with people who agree with you, repeating lies because they advance your point of view, and anything else that fits into this area does not solve problems.  It doesn’t get us to solutions.  It doesn’t bring us together.  It divides us.  It separates us.  It leads to physical harm.  It degrades us as human beings and as a civilization.

There was a fascinating September 2023 CBS News report that said most men think about the Roman Empire once a day, and some think about it as often as three times a day.  My wife asked me about it and I said that I think about it at least once a week.  She was stunned.  Why do men think about the Roman Empire so often?  My theory is that the Roman Empire is a symbol of amazing strength and power.  Incredible things came from the Roman Empire.  It seemed to a power that would last forever.  And it fell.  I always wondered how the Roman Empire could fall.  It had a strong military, powerful leaders, good economy, art, and culture.  It seemed to be the type of society that would last forever.  Yet it didn’t.  The past few years have given me an indication of how it could have fallen.  Internal bickering.  Divisiveness.  Lack of humanity.  Lack of understanding.  Growth of hate.  Poor leaders in control.  I hope that we can learn the lessons from the fall of the Roman Empire to avoid the fall of the American experiment.  Freedom, democracy, and our future are too important to just throw away the way we are. 

We have been outsmarted – time to reclaim our story

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

There are a number of people that I love to follow.  I enjoy reading what they write, listening to their podcasts, and learning from them.  I don’t always agree with them, but I do enjoy them making me think.  Some of these include Bari Weiss, Douglass Murray, Daniel Gordis, Donniel Hartman, Kareem Abdul Jabber, Gil Troy, and Yossi Klein-Halevi.  I listed this group because if you are looking to find people worth reading, these are a number of them.

In a recent blog post in the Times of Israel, Yossi Klein-Halevi wrote about the war against the Jewish story.  I didn’t love the piece.  I think he is right on with a few things but misses the most important part of both how and why we are losing the war against the Jewish story. 

We have been outsmarted.  They say Nakba.  We say, ‘The war of independence when 7 Arab armies attacked and because of the briliance of David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan and many others, miraculously, we won.’

They say apartheid.  We say, ‘Arabs have equal rights in Israel.  20% of college students are Arab.  they vote.  they are in the Knesset.  they are on the supreme court. they have more rights in Israel than anywhere else in the Arab world.’  

They say genocide. We say, ‘The IDF is the most ethical army in the world.  Have you heard this general from England talk about it?  That general from the United States is a big advocate for the IDF and how Israel handles warefar.  Here, watch this video.”

They win because they are clear and to the point while we have to have them listen to an essay to explain things. In addition, we assume a few things:

1. People are smart and will actually bother to learn.

We have seen time and time again that while people may be book smart, they are not smart, and they certainly are lazy.  They have no attention span and believe what they are fed.  This assumption has been proved false and yet we continue to think that they will learn and act the same way. 

2.  The truth will come out and vindicate us.  It does, but that’s on page 25, while the lies are on the front page.

I learned this on my first trip to Israel in 1989.  That was 35 years ago, and we still do the same thing, expecting a different result.  The lies get the front page of the newspaper, the lead story on the news, and the talking heads pontificating on cable news and the Sunday talk shows.  We need to learn to challenge the lies forcefully right away.  Call them out.  And do so in a brief manner.  Better to say “you lie” than to try to explain why it’s a lie to those who won’t spend the time to learn why it’s a lie.

3.  People don’t hate Jews. 

If there was any doubt about this, it has been resolved since October 7, 2023.  It’s clear that plenty of people do hate Jews and will fight for the rights of every other group except Jews.  We will be vilified because we are Jews.  In Germany, we thought we were Germans first.  In the US we think we are either white or Americans first.  We aren’t.  We are Jews first and always. 

We saw this at the Eurovision competition with Eden Golan, who was charged with performing while Jewish. Protesters massed outside her hotel, trapping her in her room. They demanded she be removed from the competition, simply for being from Israel, for being Jewish. In Germany in the 1930s we thought we were German first and were proven wrong. We can’t afford to be fooled like that again.

The protest outside Eden Golan’s hotel.

4.  The holocaust matters to this generation. 

The Holocaust today is basically like the Civil war to my generation.  It is history and not relevant.  It is a story.  They see a movie.  They maybe meet a survivor who is old and hard to hear.  More likely it is a 2nd generation survivor now or somebody who was a child at the time.

They also can’t comprehend 6 million people.  In the Hamas-Israel war, there are an estimated 22,000 – 33,000 people that have been killed in Gaza.  At least 12,000 are combatants.  So somewhere between 10,000 and 21,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza and the world is in an outrage.  Imagine 100 times those deaths.  That would be between 1 million and 2.1 million.  There were 6 million Jews and a total of more than 11 million civilians murdered by the Nazis.  That’s 300-600 times what is happening in Gaza just for the Jews and 550-1100 times the overall number of civilians murdered. 

Many years ago, I worked for the State of Florida.  I had a big work ethic and wanted to do a great job.  I took on more responsibility because I was able to.  As a result, I got dirty looks from my co-workers.  I was showing them up.  When one of them went on vacation for two weeks, not only did I do my job and the extra responsibilities I had taken on, I did their job and not only did the work for those 2 weeks but because I wanted to do an excellent job, cleared their caseload for an extra 2 weeks.  When my co-worker got back, she was furious with me because I made her look bad because I could do my job, take on extra work, and do her job better than she could just her job.  This is what we are dealing with in today’s world.  People want things to be the way they want them to be and when it isn’t, they throw a fit, scream and yell, and some get violent. This video of a protester at Penn is a perfect example.  When he doesn’t get his way, he storms off, screaming like a small child. 

Today’s generation wants the world to work in a way that it simply doesn’t.  Terrorists who are evil don’t just follow the rules because you tell them to.  University leaders don’t typically just do whatever the students want regardless of anything else because the students protest.  Their desire to live in a different world is laudable.  Our world can get better as a result.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  And people like terrorists don’t change because you want them to.  Different cultures have different values.  They don’t change their values because you tell them they should.  Today’s generation truly believes that just because they say it, it happens. Just because they believe it to correct, the world changes for them. 

We are losing the battle today because we are doing an inferior job of communicating our message.  We are simply being outclassed in the battle for the hearts and minds of this generation.   We make far too many assumptions about them and are letting these assumptions get in the way of doing what is needed to reach their hearts and mines.  Israel is a miraculous story.  When you look at what Tel Aviv looked like in the early 1900s when the Jews were forced to leave Jaffa, it is extraordinary to see it today.  A thriving democracy, equal rights for all citizens, making the desert bloom, the start-up nation, a technologically brilliant country that created technology that literally pulls clean drinking water from the air.  The stories of this country should resonate with today’s generation, but they don’t.  That’s on us.  We no longer can treat them the way we want them to act, we need to reach out to them in the ways that they engage and connect.

When the under 40 demographic is truly exposed to the amazing story of Israel, they fall in love with it.  A country that truly lives Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) where equal access is not just a goal but an active process to ensure is a reality.  Medical care for all.  Excellent education that doesn’t break the bank.  Mandatory national service.  So much of what they want in the US is already in place in Israel but we don’t tell our story and let our enemies frame the story against us. 

It’s time for this to stop.  We need to own our story.  We need to tell our story.  We need to allow them to see the beauty of Israel and fall in love with it.  We need them to see Israel as the hope for them to live with the values they want.  It’s our job.  It’s our responsibility.  Are you up to the challenge?

Leadership is doing what’s right no matter the cost

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Ever since October 7th, I have wanted to go back to Israel.  I was supposed to go in November 2023, but the trip was cancelled, and my family was uncomfortable with me going to volunteer.  Every day I would struggle with the deep desire to be in my homeland, doing my part to help.  Serving in the IDF is not an option at my age and without any military background.   But I can cook, clean, pick fruits and vegetables, and do whatever is needed.  The needs of my family for me not to go overrode my need and desire to go.  It has not been easy or comfortable, being in the US and my heart and soul in Israel. 

This changes on Saturday night when my flight departs for Israel.  I have the opportunity to go both for my own needs and for work related business.  It is getting me there which is what I need.  To be with my Israeli friends who have been serving in the IDF.  To visit the kibbutzim that were attacked on October 7th, go back to Sderot, also attacked.  To pay tribute at the Nova music festival site.  To spend time in Hostage square in Tel Aviv. 

There is a saying that ‘Leaders lead’.  You take risks.  You do the right thing regardless of the consequences.  For me, going to Israel right now falls into that category.  As a Jew, as a proud Zionist, it is my obligation to be there, to be part of my homeland, to give back, and to support my Israeli brothers and sisters.  Too many leaders in our world are so afraid of the backlash of doing the right thing that they do nothing.  As a result, they are merely a leader in name. 

We saw that today when President Biden said, “if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem.”  Going into Rafah is a necessity to both rescue hostages and defeat Hamas. 

This came a day after he said, “My commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish people and Israel is ironclad, even when we disagree.”

Yesterday’s statement caused him potential electoral issues in Michigan and Minnesota and with the Progressive wing of his party.  Rather than do what is right, supporting our ally, fighting against terrorism and evil, he backtracked and tried to play both sides.  Yesterday he was against terrorism, hatred, and antisemitism.  Today he was in favor of terrorism, hatred, and antisemitism.  That’s not what leaders do. 

This isn’t a partisan take.  Representatives John Fetterman and Ritchie Torres are leaders.  They have taken a position with our ally, in support of good over evil, against terrorism and hate.  They haven’t forgotten the hostages and aren’t afraid to speak out, even when they take incredible criticism.  Doing the right thing is more important than poll results. 

Senator Fetterman’s office has posters of the hostages hanging on the walls
Senator Fetterman remains Pro-Israel, wants the hostages back, and is anti-Hamas and terror

We live in a world where our “leaders” are more concerned with being liked and tracking their approval ratings than actually leading.  We see this in our Jewish community, in our local community, in our states and in the federal government.  They aren’t trained properly.  They aren’t mentored properly.  Many don’t want it and think they know what it means and what it entails. Others want it but can’t find it.  The vast majority of our leaders have not had anybody provide them with the guidance and instruction needed.

I often think back to the people who trained and mentored me.  One was very hard on me.  Very critical.  I used to say that he was ‘crusty’ on the outside and ‘gooey’ on the inside.  You had to deal with the crusty exterior to get to the gooey interior.  He wouldn’t take excuses from me.  He wouldn’t accept anything but excellence.  He didn’t sugarcoat anything.  He told it like it is and didn’t try to soften it up to save my feelings.  He made me a better professional and a better person.  He would often challenge me about my own personal desires.  Did I want to be excellent, or did I want to be mediocre?  If I wanted to be mediocre, then he didn’t have to spend time with me.  If I wanted to be excellent then I had to do things differently.  I learned tremendous lessons from him.

The other mentor I think about was much softer and nicer in his presentation.  He explained things and sent the message in a kinder way.  He also wouldn’t take excuses.  He wouldn’t let me off the hook from doing things the right way.  He challenged the way I thought and the reasons behind my thought process.  He laid out his expectations if he was going to invest his time and if I wasn’t willing to do what we required to meet them, he would invest his time elsewhere.  He shared his own personal experiences and what went right and where things went off the tracks.  He wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable about the times he wasn’t successful and what he learned from those times.  He would listen as I would share the things I learned from my mistakes and share in the joy of my successes. 

Throughout my career, I have leaned on these lessons.  Both men made a significant impact on my life.  They taught me about integrity, especially as a leader.  They taught me that at the end of the day, I have to live with myself, my choices, and my actions.  They taught me that it’s better to do the right thing and get negative consequences than to do the wrong thing and get positive recognition.  I’ll always be grateful to them for their time and their investment in me. 

It is something that I strive to do for others.  Just in the last week, I have had former employees reach out to say hi, send me a picture of them together, check in on me, ask for help with career changes, to work on an exciting project together, to pick my brain as they prepare for job interviews, and to just say thank you.  It is incredibly gratifying to know that I am paying it forward from what these two men did for me.  I look at it as an obligation that I have to make the world better by helping train leaders.  I have the privilege of working with a friend to do leadership training for college students through taking them to Israel.  Together we are working on a young leadership training program in Israel for February 2025.  If we want better leaders, we have to take action to develop them. 

Leadership trip for 19-26 year olds. Highly subsidized. An amazing experience. Sign up now!

I also have the privilege of working as a mentor to a younger professional who reminds me a great deal of myself when I began working with my first mentor.  I get a lot of gratitude helping him grow, helping him see things differently, challenging him to be excellent instead of mediocre, just as I was challenged.  It’s incredibly rewarding as I watch him grow.  Each time he ‘gets it’ and understands the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’, I get a lot of joy.  I can only imagine that my mentors felt the same way when I finally ‘got it’. 

We live in challenging times.  We need our leaders more than ever and true leaders are in short supply.  It brings me back to my trip to Israel.  I want to show my children what it means to be a leader.  What it means to do what you think is right despite the risks.  I want them to understand how important it is to do what is right no matter what.  They have seen me live my values throughout the years.  Doing what was needed for my dad during the last few weeks of his life.  Being there for my mom during that time and afterwards.  Staying true to myself and my values, morals, and ethics in spite of situations with others that it would be easy to abandon them for personal gain.  Being there in DC as one of the 300,000 people there for the big rally in support of Israel.

I can’t wait to go to Israel.  It’s only a few days and it feels like an eternity.  I will get to see my friend Grace.  My friends Margot and Tamar and their children.  My friends Yaron and Yoni who are volunteering and speaking to us.  I plan on going to East Jerusalem and having a long coffee and conversation with my Palestinian friend Mahmoud.  I hope to see my friend Noam who lives in Boston but as it happens in the Jewish world, will be in Israel for a few days when I am there.  I’m having dinner with my friend Tamara and her kids.  I’ll get the personal meaning that I need in Jerusalem, at the Nova site, at hostage square, and at the Kibbutzim in the south.  I’ll give back by picking fruits and vegetables and having dinner with IDF soldiers to say thank you.

Paratroopers in the IDF running up Masada to finish their training. What a celebration. Something I will never forget. Incredible personal meaning for them and for those of us who joined their celebration.

I’ll lead by following my values, morals, and ethics.  I’ll lead by taking the time to learn and grow.  I’ll lead by spending time with friends from America on the trip, talking about our lives and the challenges we face along with the experience we are having.  I’ll lead by writing about the experience and sharing it publicly to inspire others.  And I’ll lead by showing my children not only what it means to be a leader but also how important it is to do it with grace.  To stay true to your values, morals, and ethics.  To do what’s right no matter what. 

At the Passover Seder we end with “l’shana haba’ah b’yerushalayim, Next Year in Jerusalem”.  I’ll end this blog by saying “Next Week in Jerusalem”. 

Goebbels died but his teachings are living on

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Joseph Goebbels

I remember learning about the Nazi propaganda as I grew up.  What a masterful job they did spreading lies and breeding hatred.  Cartoons.  Videos.  Posters.  Slogans.  They kept at it, repeating the hate towards Jews until people believed it was true.  When I walk through Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum, they do an incredible job highlighting just how the Nazi’s did it.  With all the documentation available to us, I was sure the world wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.  As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

I was wrong.  Very wrong.  So wrong that it scares me.  I watched what happened on the campus of Columbia University and also at Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Michigan, and many others.  These ‘students’ who are supposed to be learning and challenging themselves were instead lemmings.  They were so strong in their chants yet so empty in their knowledge.  Most didn’t know what river or what sea.  Most didn’t even know what protesting was like or was about.  They expected catered meals.  Finals cancelled with everybody getting an A.  No consequences for their actions.  They weren’t protesting for things they believed in but rather for things they were told that aren’t true.  It was horrifying.  It was embarrassing. 

It escalated to potential violence many times until eventually there was violence.  The violence against Jewish students got minimal attention.  A woman stabbed in the eye at Yale.  Physically assaulted at Columbia.  Beaten unconscious at UCLA.  When it became clear that the University and the police were going to do nothing to protect them, the Jewish students and community tried to dismantle the tents themselves which resulted in more violence.  That violence did get media attention because it could be blamed on the Jews. 

I watch as ‘celebrities’ like Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo, John Oliver, and John Cusack spew hate and lies.  Because of their celebrity status, they have a platform to spread their antisemitism and misinformation.  Key words like genocide, apartheid, famine, ceasefire are used to demonize Israel, regardless of any facts to back them up.  People believe what they hear, especially when it’s in bite size pieces and as Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Chants are common now to ‘Globalize the intifada’ while most of those chanting it have no idea what the intifada was or what an intifada is.  Violent uprising.  Suicide bombers.  Innocent civilians murdered.  So, to stop innocent civilians from being killed during a war, we are going to murder innocent civilians.  Civilians killed in war at a ratio 9 times less than the UN and Red Cross accepted numbers is a genocide but calling for the murder of civilians because they are Jewish is acceptable?  This is the world we live in where Jew hatred is so strong that the obvious hypocrisy is allowed.

The use of the world genocide is right out of Goebbels playbook.  Genocide is a hot button word and is a horrific thing.  In Syria over 300,000 civilians were murdered by Assad.  Close to 200,000 people were killed in the Iraq war.  In 2022 more than 100,000 people were killed in the Ethiopian civil war.  Since 1996, more than 6 million people have been killed in the Congo war.  These are not called genocides despite the numbers being far more than the people killed in Gaza.  Yet despite not meeting the definition of genocide and the facts showing this war is anything but genocidal, the word keeps getting used over and over and over again.  There are people who now believe it because they have heard it so often.  What Hamas did on October 7th was genocidal.  They wanted to eliminate every Jew and Israeli just because they were Jewish or Israeli.  They publicly admit to genocidal wishes and yet people excuse it.  This is the power of constant repetition until people believe it’s true even when it is not.

Apartheid is another word inappropriately used to delegitimize the State of Israel and Jews in general.  Israel is not an apartheid state.  Citizens have equal rights regardless of their status as Arab, Christian, Druze, Baha’i, Bedouin, or Jew.  Those who are not citizens, like in any country, don’t have the same benefits as those who are citizens. That isn’t apartheid.  There are Arab members of the Supreme Court, the Knesset, in universities, serving in the military, and in every part of Israeli society.  There is apartheid happening in the middle east – in the Arab countries that won’t allow Jews.  Gaza was an apartheid state where Jews were not allowed.  I remember going through the Rafah crossing in 1989 as I took the bus from Jerusalem to Cairo.  That wouldn’t have been possible in 2023. 

The other word that gets used improperly and often is genocide.  Genocide is defined as, “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”  So, if you want to say Israel is committing genocide against Hamas, you might be correct.  They are a terrorist organization who had their own genocidal intentions on October 7th and continues to say they will do what they did on October 7th over and over and over again.  To say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is simply false.  If they wanted to commit genocide, then on October 8th they would have carpet bombed Gaza and nobody would be left alive.  Instead, Israel has been tactical.  They have done all they can to avoid civilian deaths.  This is shown in the ratio of combatants to civilians killed in this war.  According to the UN and Red Cross, the normal ratio is 9 civilians for every 1 combatant.  Depending on what Hamas numbers you believe, Israel is somewhere between 0.6 civilians to 1 combatant to 1.2 civilians to 1 combatant.  Well below the normally accepted ratio for every other country and every other war in the world.  Genocide is used to inflame people.  It’s used to inspire hate and physical attacks on Jews.  It is a bold-faced lie that gets repeated, especially by those celebrities, over and over and over again.

Occupation is the fourth word that gets used regularly.   Israel withdrew from Gaza and removed its citizens by force in 2005.  That’s the fact.  Since 2005, there has been no occupation of Gaza.  So, saying it is because of the occupation is simple another lie.  People may then talk about the blockade.  The blockade was put in place when Hamas took over and started firing rockets at Israel and building tunnels to kidnap Israelis.  It exists by both Egypt and Israel to do their best to limit rockets and missiles and guns from getting into Gaza.  It doesn’t limit food or medicine.  Saying occupation or blockade is merely a way for uneducated people to attempt to place the blame on Israel and the Jews.

The newest lie, which occurred tonight, is that Hamas accepted the ceasefire offered by Israel and Israel still attacked Rafah.  The reality is more like this:


Israel: Here is our ceasefire offer.

Hamas: No

Israel: Here is option 2 for a ceasefire.

Hamas: No

Hamas then bombs the reopened humanitarian corridor.

Israel: Fine, we will attack Rafah.

Israel begins to attack Rafah.

Hamas: We will take option 3 which you didn’t offer.  We accept the ceasefire that we negotiated with ourselves. 

The World:  Israel rejected the ceasefire offer that they offered, and Hamas accepted.

Once again, the truth doesn’t matter, and the lie gets repeated over and over and over again.  The media covers the lie.  The New York Times covers the lie.  Papers in Europe cover the lie. 

As we move into the next phase of the war, not just between Hamas and Israel but between those who hate Jews and Jewish people, we need to be vigilant with these lies.  We need to be loud and repetitive in combatting them and telling the truth.  We need to keep it simple and not give a lecture.  I recommend something like this:

Response to lie:  You are lying.

Response to lie:  That’s not true.

Response to lie:  False!!!

Response to lie:  You don’t know what’s true.

Response to lie:  Learn something before you lie about it.

Keep it brief.  Keep it simple.  If they want to know the truth, and most don’t, then they will ask, and you can tell them. 

This next phase will be the most challenging.  We see the violence occurring at UCLA and around the country.  We see it happening in Europe.  I’m afraid that the next phase will involve larger scale attacks against Jewish people, homes, and businesses.  Protect yourself.  Learn the law.  Take self-defense classes.  If you feel the need to be armed, make sure you both follow the laws of your state/country and get trained on how to use it.  The decision to be armed is not one to take lightly and it’s not a joke and guns are not toys. 

If Israel goes into Rafah and ends the war between Hamas and Israel, it will not end the war against the Jewish people.  It will not mean that we are safe in our countries.  It will not mean Israel is safe with Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran still attacking.  We are preparing to move into a new stage that we only saw a glimpse of with the protests on campuses.  Be prepared.  Never again isn’t just a slogan, it means we are going to take action and do what we have to ensure that it never happens again. 

Yotam Berger wrote this

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

For the first time in the existance of this blog, I am not writing it. This was written by Yotam Berger, and Israeli PhD student at Stanford. I couldn’t have said it better or clearer so I’m letting his words say what I think and feel. Please read Yotam’s words and think hard about them. You can read the original post (in Hebrew) here. This translation came from Daniel Gordis’s substack Israel from the Inside.

Man in a Hamas costume on the campus of Stanford this week.

Five lessons from Stanford, California 

The academic year in the United States is coming to an end. In a few weeks, the university students graduating will stand on the grass, in caps and gowns. They will excitedly take pictures, shake hands with the deans, and then fly away, making way for a new generation of their ilk.

Ahead of the graduation ceremonies, the anti-Israel student protests at American universities are also increasing. Let’s start with the “all clear” siren. Here at Stanford, at least, the students who sleep on the campus lawns and call for a “global intifada” are—as a rule—not dangerous in the physical sense of the word. But they are very dangerous in the medium and long term, as far as the image of the leader of the free world is concerned.

This is my second year at Stanford. When we returned here in September after the summer break, I intended to finish the year with an approved research proposal and a third of my PhD written. It’s hard to describe how far I am from meeting that goal. In my opinion, I’m not really unusual. Since October, many Israelis abroad have found themselves forced to choose between two options—to put their heads down or become ambassadors without a choice. Who can even write an article when his two brothers are fighting in Gaza? Instead, I found myself spending much of my time on “outreach” activities that I had no intention of taking part in.

Despite this, I learned some very important lessons this year that I will never forget. As the school year comes to a close, and in light of the wave of anxious questions from around the country in light of the current round of campus madness, I thought I’d share the five most important lessons I learned this past year at Stanford, California.

1. Whether we want it or not, we are always—first and foremost—the Jews.

The first year here was a fabulous academic experience like no other. I felt surrounded by international friends. I was given full access to the world’s brightest legal minds. The feeling was that endless opportunities lay ahead. Friends from Israel, who asked already last year if we suffered from anti-Israelism, sounded funny to me. No way!! I am a liberal Israeli. I wrote for the most leftist newspaper in Israel. I did my clerkship in one of the more liberal courts in the Western world. Why would anyone have a problem with me? I walked among those who I thought were friends as equals among equals. I could talk about Israel freely, criticize it and love it, have discussions that I thought were good and complex about the most sensitive issues even with those who clearly disagreed with me. I felt like a citizen of the world.

That was an illusion. There really is no such thing, it turns out, as a “Jew who is a citizen of the world,” as long as the Jew insists on his right to a national existence. For many of those whom I saw as friends, it turned out, I was first and foremost the Jew. At the moment of truth, few of them stood by me on a personal level. Almost none of them stood by me at the national level. Their double standards allowed Israel-hating students to say horrible things about me and my friends, but silenced our every attempt to oppose it. In some places, I had to choose between apologizing for my Israeliness and rejection. There was no choice to be made.

This eye-opening experience also has advantages. It is a litmus test for the human quality of those around us. Some of the people around me went out of their way to support me, or to show gestures of humanity. I found myself surrounded by strong and durable ties. I will not forget these friends easily.

2. America deserves Donald Trump.

An Israeli friend joked to me that if Trump is re-elected president in November, he will walk the halls of Stanford and hand out baklava. It’s a very funny joke only because it’s not entirely imaginary.

November 9, 2016 was a day that struck me with amazement. Like many all over the world, the fact that the United States of America elected Donald Trump as president was unimaginable. In a very deep sense, no matter how many commentaries I read, how many films and documentary series I watched—the appointment of this man seemed inexplicable to me. Unimaginable. Impossible. Even years later, when the words “President Trump” stopped feeling strange on the tongue, the choice of him seemed inexplicable to me. A glitch in the matrix. I couldn’t understand how his campaign could be successful.

This year I finally got it. No, if I were an American I still wouldn’t vote for Trump. But I now understand those who vote for him. Donald Trump is some Americans’ answer to the madness on the other side, a madness I didn’t notice until it turned its face in my direction. A madness no less terrible than Trumps’s madness. No, if I had the right to vote, I would not vote for Donald Trump. But America deserves him.

3. The progressive movement is not a political ally of liberal Zionists.

Last year, the progressive movement seemed like an amusing youth rebellion to me. Yes, the ceremony where everyone announces their gender at the beginning of class seemed strange to me, not always necessary, but not harmful. The fact that I had to declare my race on every form I filled out (and make sure to state that I was “Middle Eastern”) made me laugh, but didn’t upset me. I saw the American progressive movement as the infantile sister of liberal movements that I respected. I saw it as an ally. That was a mistake.

I saw the American progressive movement as the infantile sister of liberal movements that I respected. I saw it as an ally. That was a mistake.

The “progressive” movement is not an amusing anecdote. This week I was exposed to a particularly graphic expression of this. In the “Pro-Palestinian” encampment (in double quotation marks, since a significant number of its residents are unable to point to the country on a map, and it is doubtful that they are able to name a single Palestinian leader) that was re-established in the heart of the campus, a man was photographed in a full terrorist costume—including a black sock hat with a slit for his eyes, and a green Hamas ribbon on his head, next to students who are active for transsexual rights. This strange alliance [DG – since Hamas executes those it considers sexual deviants, which obviously includes transsexuals] is not funny to me.

The progressives are challenging much more than the state of Israel, or the right of the Jews to a nation state. I’m not sure how many of the people who identify as progressives actually hold these ideals, and how many of them are just repeating them over and over loudly, with the intention of gaining some kind of social sympathy. But those of them who hold this position really no longer believe in the existence of “truth,” or in the existence of facts.

I’m not referring here to those who express the opinion that it is difficult to get to the truth, or who think that the courts do not always succeed in finding out what the facts are, or who hold that different ideas are perceived differently through different eyes. I’m speaking about those who say unequivocally that there is no such thing as truth. They are not interested in presenting facts to support their arguments because they do not believe there is such a thing as facts, and they say so explicitly. They think that it is forbidden to use the term “jihadist” in front of jihadists, or to call supporters of terrorism by their names, because feelings are more important than facts (although, of course, first and foremost theirfeelings). They don’t believe there should be consequences for actions, because they don’t believe there should be consequences for anything. Everything can be disputed, because nothing is real. Life is a debate club. It’s not a treat, or at least not just a treat: it’s an ideology. This ideology challenges the existence of objective truth—attainable or unattainable—as an intellectual concept.

4. Always go straight. It is not so important what is said or written about you.

The denial and turning of the backs of those whom I saw as friends, or at least fellow travelers, came with a temptation: to lower one’s head. I do not belittle and I completely understand Israelis who chose this. At this stage, for now, being ashamed of being Israeli, suppressing Jewish symbols, trying to adopt the American accent—can ensure a reasonable quality of life even in places where hatred of Israel is very present. But when the temptation was placed in front of me—to some extent at least— I tried to remember what I had learned from two teachers in recent years.

Attorney Momi Lemberger usually tells his interns to “always walk straight.” When a decision is made in a case—should an indictment be filed? Should the charges be dropped?—The only thing that matters are the facts and the law. It is easy to be tempted to consider what was written in the newspapers. What the minister says. The chance to advance in the system. But considering such considerations inevitably leads to bragging, to losing one’s way. Judge George Kara used to tell his interns that “it doesn’t really matter what they say or write about you.” The facts are more important. Making the right decisions is more important. There is no reason to align with vanities, even if it has some social or public cost.

These lessons are true in relation to greater and much more important decisions than the personal decision of whether to keep one’s head down or insist on externalizing and being proud of one’s Israeliness, even in unpleasant forums. But they are infinitely true when the heaviest price to pay for going straight is that some American PhD students will turn up their noses at you. Since October, I’ve learned that there’s no point in keeping your head down, while there is intrinsic value in the decision to always going straight, to calling a spade a spade.

5. The solution to the university crisis cannot come from below, but it can be parachuted from above.

The kids protesting in these university yards worked very hard to get accepted to Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia. Most of them are not the “Vietnam generation,” even if that is what they tell themselves. They are the equivalent of the 8200 children and IDF Radio in Israel. [DG – both very prestigious jobs in the army, the former in one of the most respected intelligence units, the latter on the radio, a position very hard to snag.] They worked very hard and paid a lot of money to get here, and they care a lot about how they graduate. More than that, they care what the characters they value think of them. True, they care what their classmates think. Most of them care just as much what the President of the University, the Dean of the Faculty, and even the lecturer in the course think of them.

For many of them, the current wave of protests can be an educational opportunity. American universities repeatedly emphasize the importance of freedom of speech in American culture, the centrality of the First Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees absolute freedom of speech in the American political atmosphere. They can’t shut them up. That is true. But the universities can, and are even obliged, to educate their students. They should not and cannot prevent these children from screaming their demands to spread the intifada or boycott Israel. But they can tell them that they hold very stupid positions.

If university presidents would stop trembling in their own shadows, they could tell their students that they have a right to express stupid views, but that shouting them out won’t make them any more correct. Lecturers cannot silence their students, but they can emphasize that anyone who expresses uninformed or unfounded positions with great confidence is an educational failure. An Israeli—as I discovered—cannot really convince his American counterpart that Israel is not committing genocide, even if there is not even a shred of evidence to support the argument that what is happening in Gaza is genocide. But if the president of the university were to look at his students and express sincere disappointment when they express such a preposterous position, something in a significant portion of those students might shift.

The effectiveness of the “direct information”—in front of the young students—exists, but is very limited and in any case organized bodies can hardly promote it in an inorganic way. The solution, in my opinion, lies in putting pressure on the presidents. And there is urgency in this—today’s generation of presidents and senior lecturers are still old and established people, who were educated in the 1970s and 1980s. They remember the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War. They are liberals, but they are liberals like Bill Clinton. They have respect for Israel. They have no intention of responding to the BDS demands that many of their students voice. In private conversations with Israelis, they also express their feelings of affection for Israel generously. But their feelings of fear of their American students are immeasurably stronger than their affection for their Israeli students. The pressure needs to be put on them. If they are freed from the terror that grips them of expressing their opinion, they can set boundary lines, and these may seep down—to those who want to participate in the “pro-Palestinian” festivals, to make an impression, but want more to be loved by important people in their professional lives.

If we do not take advantage of the present opportunity, we will find ourselves in a short time standing in front of a new generation of presidents and deans. It is not known if they will still have positive feelings—however repressed—towards Israel.

Fight, Flight or Die – you get to choose

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Columbia University has been in the news for the past few weeks due to their anti-Israel and anti-Jewish encampment.  UCLA has been for the same reason.  Portland State.  Northwestern.  Harvard.  Yale.  Penn.  University of Michigan. George Washington.  Cal Poly Humboldt.  Brown. Cornell.  Princeton.  University of Southern California.  Arizona State.  CCNY.  CUNY.  Plenty of Universities where students went beyond free speech and protests, violated University policies, intimidated Jewish students, blocked access to campus, and in the case of UCLA, violently attacked and beat a Jewish woman, Yale where a Jewish woman was stabbed in the eye, and Columbia where two Jewish men were attacked.

Then there are Universities like the University of Florida, University of Texas, Florida State University, University of South Florida, University of North Carolina.  University of Utah, University of Illinois, Mary Washington, Northeastern, Indiana, Wash U in St Louis, University of Pittsburgh, UConn, University of Utah. VCU, University of Georgia, Tulane, and Virginia Tech.  At each of these Universities, the University Presidents and leadership allowed free speech and protests but enforced their campus rules and regulations.  As such, when the protests went beyond free speech, they were broken up and people arrested.

For the most part, it’s the first group of schools that have been in the media.  That’s because of the old news adage, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’  We saw an incredible lack of leadership by the University Presidents at those schools.  Columbia President Minouche Shafik, fresh off her testimony to Congress, enabled the protesters, didn’t enforce the campus regulations, finally called in the NYPD, and then promptly apologized for doing it.  Jewish students were encouraged to finish the semester away from campus, being denied the equal protection of the law and equal access to the education they are paying for.  Chants of “go back to Poland”, ‘We are Hamas’ and ‘Globalize the intifada’ occurred on campus.  US Representatives Ilhan Omar and AOC showed up to support the active hatred of Jews on campus.  Omar even said, “We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide.” 

Khymani James, a student at Columbia and one of the leaders of Columbia University’s anti-Israel encampment threatened to kill Jews in a live stream meeting with the school.  Nothing happened until it became public when he was barred from campus.  He was then let back on campus until they were exposed again and he was suspended.  Columbia chose to be complicit with threats of violence against Jews.

These are threats to Jewish students.  The encampment grew and got more violent and more active.  Finally, they took over a campus building, barricading themselves inside and doing damage to the building.  After a ridiculous press conference with a student leader who demanded ‘humanitarian aid’ for those who chose to occupy the building and could leave at any time, did President Shafik relent and call in the NYPD to break up the protest.  She wasn’t interested in protecting the Jewish students, only protecting her campus buildings.

Northwestern President Michael Schill chose to give in to the student terrorists holding his campus hostage.  Brown University did the same thing.  Their leadership caved to the students’ bad behavior, breaking of the campus rules and regulations and criminal activities.

These Presidents and their administration have failed their test of leadership.  They have abandoned their Jewish students.  There are calls for their resignations as a result.  I can’t imagine any other group facing what Jewish students have faced in which the actions and behaviors of these Presidents and administrations would be acceptable.  At UCLA, their failure, along with the assault on a Jewish woman, resulted in Jewish students believing they had been abandoned and taking matters into their own hands, working to break up the antisemitic, illegal encampment resulting in a riot. 

We have a serious leadership problem on our campuses.  By not holding students and faculty accountable to the rules when it comes to Jewish students, they are guilty of endangering Jewish students’ safety.  They are committing Title VI violations and there may be civil rights lawsuits against them.  They have become a national joke, and the Universities are viewed unfavorably by most.  There is a reason you don’t negotiate with terrorists.  Reinforcing their bad behavior only ensures more bad behavior in the future. 

Compare that to the University of Florida, who’s President, Ben Sasse, provided the campus rules and regulations in advance along with the consequences for violating them.  When the protesters went beyond free speech and violated the campus rules, the consequences were enforced. 

Other universities took action after letting the protesters know they were violating the campus rules and would be arrested if they didn’t disperse.  When they didn’t, the police came in and arrested them. Actions have consequences. Failing to obey the rules and the law is illegal.

I want to be clear.  Free speech is important.  Being able to protest is important.  However, when people decide to break the rules or break the laws, there are consequences for their actions.  That’s what they were arrested for, their actions.  Protests matter and there is a line that cannot be crossed.  When the line is crossed, leadership has an obligation to act.

When I see some of our country’s leaders in an uproar because the protesters are held accountable, I get angry.  They know better and they know it is only happening because it is against the Jews.  When I see our country’s leaders and our Jewish communal leaders be silent about what is happening to Jewish students on campus, I get angry.  We cannot put our heads in the sand and hope it goes away.  We know better.  We know what comes next.  I’m grateful to our country’s leaders and our Jewish communal leaders who have spoken up and taken public positions.  There are far too few of them. 

Sen. John Fetterman, Rep. Elise Stefanik, Rep. Ritchie Torres, and Speaker Mike Johnson have been leading public advocates to protect Jewish students on campus.  Others have joined them.  Yet far too many have been silent or supporting these encampments designed to terrorize, intimidate, and block Jewish students and faculty from entering campus.  In many cases they assaulted Jewish students. This has nothing to do with the war in Gaza.  It has nothing to do with humanitarian aid.  It has everything to do with antisemitism, Jew hatred. 

Chris Cuomo, a TV talking head, spoke out eloquently against the rise of Jew hatred on these college campuses.  His comment on Twitter when he posted it was shocking.  “I never thought in America I would have Jewish people thanking me for arguing that they have a right to exist.”  It is worth watching.

UNRWA came out with an announcement that there is plenty of food available in Gaza but there isn’t money to buy it.  This is humanitarian aid, provided for free, that UNRWA is either allowing Hamas to steal or selling to Hamas who is selling it on the black market.  The more facts that come out, the worse people like AOC, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Nancy Pelosi, Rashida Talib, and these protesters look. 

May 1 starts Jewish Heritage Month.  President Biden issued a proclamation in which he references protecting the Jewish community in the United States but fails to mention anything happening on campus.  He talks about the hostages but has failed to pressure Qatar, who houses the leaders of Hamas, and continues to provide Iran, the funder of Hamas, with more money.  His words don’t match up with his actions.  We need to demand more of President Biden and of Congress.  We need to make our voices heard loudly.

As antisemitism, Jew hatred, increases in the United States, I see and hear more and more Jewish people speaking up and being outraged.  I am part of a group of parents who are concerned about what is happening on college campuses and I see the change as Jewish parents and students no long look to the Ivy League schools and look for safer campuses.  I have received calls and emails from parents who want to take advantage of Governor DeSantis’s decree that he will waive many of the transfer requirements for Jewish students to transfer to Florida Universities.  Yeshiva University extended their transfer deadline.  The Technion in Haifa has openly offered sanctuary for Jewish students, graduate students, and faculty who don’t feel safe at their University. 

This is America in 2024.  We need to face reality and act.  Raise our voices and speak out and speak up.  We need to thank our allies in other communities.  We need to thank our politicians who are supportive and make sure our voices are heard by those who hate Jews and fight for there to be more antisemitism, more Jew hatred.  If you haven’t been an activist, it’s time to become one.  Our collective silence has brought us to this point.  It is our collective action that will defeat Jew hatred.  It’s your choice, fight, flight, or die.

Screams Before Silence is a must watch

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

I decided to watch the new Sheryl Sandberg documentary “Screams Before Silence”.  I have seen the 47-minute Hamas video as well as the documentary about the Nova music festival massacre.  Both of those were incredibly impactful and hearing Lee Sasi, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre speak is something I will never forget.  I’ll be in Israel soon and get to visit the site of the Nova music festival massacre, Sderot, and other areas in the south near Gaza.

Screams Before Silence – because of the topic it won’t embed here but you can click to watch

Since October 7th, I have been wanting to go back to Israel daily.  My last trip was in November 2022 and while I have an ongoing desire to go to Israel, I have not been able to return since then.  After October 7th, my family would not allow me to go to Israel.  Every time I brought up the topic, I was instantly shut down by them.  It wasn’t until this trip that, while they don’t want me to go, they aren’t stopping me.  I leave in 12 days and am anxiously anticipating getting on the plane and heading to our homeland.  There is a deep need inside of me to be back in Israel, connecting with the land and my people to help start healing my Jewish neshamah (soul). 

Many people have asked why I would subject myself to watching the 47-minute Hamas video.  And then also watch the Nova music festival documentary.  And now Screams Before Silence, documenting the rape and abuse of women by Hamas.  My answer used to be simple.  I needed to bear witness for those who were murdered and abused.  Now it is more than that.  In a world where we already have October 7th deniers, where people are saying that Hamas had the right to murder, rape, kidnap and abuse innocent civilians, who call the war between Israel and Hamas “Bibi’s War” or “Netanyahu’s War” I have to do more than just be frustrated and angry.  How can anybody watch these atrocities, much of it filmed BY HAMAS, and hold anybody else responsible?  How can anybody who sees the actual footage, who listens to the survivors, not see the evil that is Hamas and Iran? 

In all three videos, they show the IDF arriving at the Nova massacre for the first time.  Each time I hear the soldier counting the dead as he begins to arrive, my heart breaks.  Echad, Shtyim, Shalosh, Arba, Chamesh (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  When he looks into the food and drink tent and sees all the dead bodies strewn on the ground, the pain in his voice is palpable.  “Oh my God. Oh my God.”  His questioning plea, “Is anyone alive here?”  “Give us a sign of life.” “No signs of life.  Anyone?  Please?” is haunting as we know there is nobody alive, but he doesn’t yet know that.  In Screams Before Silence, they are interviewing him in between parts of the video.  The look on his face, the pain in his eyes, cuts deep to my soul.  I think about the students and professors on college campuses that are protesting and wonder if their watching this would make a difference.  Are their hearts and souls already too filled with hatred for Jews that somehow, they would feel satisfied that we got what we deserved.  What a terrible world we live in if that were to be true, yet I fear that it is.   

The video of the IDF first arriving at the Nova Music Festival massacre.

When I see people, particularly Jews, who focus only on what is happening in Gaza, I find myself getting angry.  They forget what happened on October 7th that was the cause of the war.  They forget or don’t believe that Hamas uses human shields.  That Hamas was shooting Gazans trying to leave the north for safety in the beginning of the war and it was Israel that created the safe corridors for them.  They don’t want to believe that Hamas would actually turn hospitals, mosques, homes, and ambulances into military structures and make them military targets.  It’s as if they have to find a way to excuse the evil that is Hamas because they can’t bear to believe that there really could be people that evil in the world.  Once again, Jews become the scapegoat.  Instead of Israel being the victim of a horrific and barbaric attack, Israel is the one in the wrong.  Instead of Hamas being war criminals for the taking of the hostages, for the rapes and brutal murders of civilians, for using human shields, for using hospitals and mosques and ambulances as military structures, it is Israel, a country that documents how much they do to minimize civilian loss of life, that gets the blame. 

When I watched Screams Before Silence, there are two moments that really stood out and impacted me.  The first was when Sheryl Sandberg, who does the interviews throughout, asks the first responders to see some of the images that they saw in person.  Each image they show her draws a more dramatic reaction from her.  You can see in her eyes and in her face the impact of the images.  She gasps at a number of them.  The first responders are telling us what she is seeing.  As horrific as the descriptions are, you can watch Sheryl’s face to see that the images are far worse.

The second is at the end of the documentary.  Sheryl moves from the interviewer seat to the one where those being interviewed sit.  You can see how much this has impacted her.  The director of the documentary comes to the seat Sheryl just left and asks her about making this film and the impact.  As Sheryl talks about the experience, tears came to my eyes.  It was incredibly moving.  I had a similar experience just watching it and I can’t imagine what it was like for her to talk to the survivors, hear their full stories, see the images that the first responders took.  It was a beautiful and powerful interview that was emotionally powerful.

Today has been full of events related to Israel and the war with Hamas.  The first lawsuit was filed against Columbia University for their failure to protect Jewish students. 

The Columbia University President set a 2 pm deadline for the end of the encampment and then let it pass with no consequences.  Senator Bernie Sanders called the war “an illegal war”, forgetting or not caring that Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, murdering more than 1200 civilians, kidnapping more than 250 civilians and still has over 130 hostages.  A number of members of Congress are calling for the federal funding to be removed from the Universities that aren’t protecting Jewish students.  The body of an Israeli hostage was discovered near Gaza, somebody killed on October 7th that was thought to be a hostage.  At UCLA, an anonymous group built a giant screen with loudspeakers outside the UCLA protest showing footage from October 7 on a loop. 

After being instructed not to put up tents at the University of South Florida in Tampa, a few protesters decided they would anyway and were arrested.  That’s what effective leaders do, they follow the rules and regulations in place for everybody.  There are rumors of a potential peace deal brokered by Egypt. Sinwar was seen publicly in Rafah. 

Caitlyn Jenner took on the anti-Israel crowd in a publicly shared video. 

The leadership of Washington University in St. Louis put out a powerful statement about hateful protest on their campus and the arrests made because of the violation of their policies.

Israel is preparing for the ICC to issue arrest warrants for their leaders for war crimes.  The United States seems willing to sit back and allow it to happen although there are members of congress who are urging President Biden to step in and stop this farce. 

The rise of antisemitism is growing everywhere we look.  At McGill University in Canada, a man dressed up as a terrorist with a mock suicide bomb attached to his chest.  How long until they are no longer fake bombs and we see suicide bombers active in the US and Canada?

Jewish students are being blocked from entering campus at UCLA and Columbia. As students they have the right to be on campus and attend class. Their rights are being denied by people who are breaking the campus rules. Where are the Presidents of these campuses? Where are the Governors of California and New York?

We live in a world and a time where activism against prejudice and hate is more important than ever.  The truth and facts don’t seem to matter.  A group of Christians joined the pro-Israel counter protest at Columbia today.  That’s what we need.  People to stand up to hate, especially antisemitism, even when it’s not their group being targeted.  Over the past few years, I have been interviewed on the TV news about the rise in antisemitism far too often.  My message has always been the same.  We need to stand together, speak out together, against all hate.  When we allow hate to grow, we get the evil of Hamas.  We get the uninformed students at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, NYU, and many other Universities who wouldn’t dream of saying what they are about Jews about anybody else. 

The question for each of us is, what are we going to do?  Are we going to sit back and hope it goes away?  Are we going to hide so that we can try to stay safe?  Are we going to speak out, speak up, and be loud about how this is wrong?  Are we going to challenge our friends and family who spew Jew hatred couched in anti-Israel or anti-Zionism troupes?  Are we going to reach out to our US Representatives and Senators and demand that they protect not just Jewish students on campus but Jews everywhere in the United States?

I started by talking about the film Screams Before Silence.  It is something everybody should watch.  It’s not easy.  It’s painful.  It’s hard. It’s necessary.  It’s available to watch on YouTube.  I urge you to watch it.  I urge you to watch it with others.  I urge you to have your friends watch it, especially those who are critical of Israel. 

I’m doing my part with the film.  And I’m going to Israel on May 11th to not just visit my homeland but to do my part in the healing after October 7th both for myself and for Israel.  I’ll pick produce.  I’ll visit the sites of the horrific October 7th attack.  I’ll cook for IDF soldiers and serve them dinner.  I’ll be there for Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) which will be very different than the other times I’ve been there for it.  I’ll be there for Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) which will also be different than any other time I have been there.  I’ll spend Shabbat at the Kotel (the Western Wall).  I’ll spend time with my Israeli friends who are like family to me.  And I am planning to meet with at least one of my Palestinian friends for a powerful conversation about how we move forward. 

Wearing Tefillin and a Tallis at the Kotel (Western Wall) before I went to pray and connect spiritually

I’m not asking you to do what I’m doing.  I am asking you to do something.  Are you up for the challenge?

I took this picture – it always inspires me. I hope it inspires you to take action

Frustrations with the war against Hamas

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

Every day I wake up and the war between Hamas and Israel is continuing.  The hostages remain in the tunnels in captivity.  Some are dead, some being sexually abused, some being physically abused.  None getting needed medication.  Iran continues to provide resources to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi’s in Yemen. 

I never thought I would say this, but I wish the world was silent about all of this.  “Why?” you may ask.  Because rather than condemn the terrorists of Hamas who still have American hostages among those they kidnapped, instead of condemning Iran, instead of demanding that the Houthi’s and Hezbollah stop firing rockets at Israel, the world condemns Israel for fighting for survival. 

I wish I could say it was just the non-Jewish world.  Our history as a people, for thousands of years, has us as our own worst enemies.  Facing persecution, facing death, facing evil, we have a history of defending those who persecute and kill us, those who are evil, all while condemning ourselves.  I don’t know why we do this.  I wish I knew.  I wish I could figure out a way to stop it.  Just like in Germany, we defend those who hate us all the way into the gas chambers.

I am amazed at those who call this war genocide.  The definition of genocide is, “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”  It is clear that is not what Israel is doing.  How do we know this?  First because according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the Palestinian population has increased about 10 times since the War of Independence in 1948.  Even more recently, according to the PCBS, displacement of more than 200,000 Palestinians, with the majority of them to the Palestinian country of Jordan, after the 1967 war, the Palestinian world population was 14 million by the end of 2022.  This means that the number of Palestinians in the world has doubled since 1967.  That goes against the definition of genocide.   Secondly, during this current war, if Israel wanted to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, they could have just bombed the entire country and killed all the people there in a matter of days.  Instead, they have chosen to be more surgical in their efforts, doing their best to avoid civilian casualties whenever possible.   Once again, you do not attempt destroy a nation or group of people by doing all you can to save civilians.

The other thing that amazes me is when people talk about this being the worst loss of civilian life in conflict. The facts simply don’t back that up.  According to the UN and the Red Cross, there are usually 9 civilians killed in armed conflict for every military person killed.  That means 90% of all deaths in armed conflict are civilians.  Iraq Body Count figures from 2003 to 2013 indicate that 77% of casualties were civilians. So how does the war between Hamas and Israel compare?  If we use the statistics provided by Hamas, which nobody really believes is accurate, the ratio is somewhere between 1:1 and 1.2:1.  That means Israel is 8-9 times BETTER than the world average and 7 times better than the US in Iraq.  And that’s using the numbers provided by Hamas!

Estimates put the ration at somewhere between 1.0 and 1.2 civilians per Hamas Terrorist killed in the war, far better than the normal, accepted ration of 9-1

Just this week, Israel tragically and accidentally bombed trucks from the World Central Kitchen, killing 7 of the aid workers.  It is a horrible tragedy.  There is no excuse for it.  And Israel hasn’t made any excuses.  Israel admitted it was a mistake and they were in the wrong.  They did an investigation, identified what happened, held those accountable whose actions resulted in the bombing and these deaths, and vowed to learn from this mistake.  Listen to an interview by friend Fleur Hassan- Nahoum, the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem. She, and Israel, isn’t hiding from what happened or how awful it is.

Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem and my friend, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, is brutally honest about the awful mistake in attacking the convoy of aid workers. This is what sets Israel apart – a willingness to admit mistakes, hold people accountable, and learn from their mistakes.

In October of 2015, the US initiated an airstrike against a Doctors Without Borders trauma center and killed at least 42 people including 14 hospital staff members and at least 24 patients.  The investigation found that human errors, fatigue, process, and equipment failures were at fault in the deadly airstrike.  US Central command said that, “These factors contributed to the ‘fog of war,’ which is the uncertainty often encountered during combat operations.”

In August of 2021, the US made a mistake and fired a hellfire missile in Kabul, accidentally killing 10 civilians, 7 of which were children.  When I was attending the Israel-American Council Summit in Austin, Texas last year, my Uber driver had recently gotten out of the military.  He was in Afghanistan during this time and during the botched withdrawal of the troops there.  The stories he told me were horrible.  The mistakes and errors made turned my stomach.  I felt terrible about how we, America, treated the people who served in Afghanistan and those who were our allies in Afghanistan.  It was understood that we messed up and made mistakes and that this happens in war. 

Every other country in the world gets the grace of making mistakes in war.  Not Israel, the Jewish nation.  Once again, Israel is held to a different standard.  I have said repeatedly that war is terrible.  We should do everything we can to avoid war. When you can’t avoid war and you must take on evil, you must defeat it.  Otherwise, evil continues to grow.  Yet in today’s world, it appears there is a desire to have more evil than Jews. 

I listen to people like Bernie Sanders and even friends who are Jewish who unfairly criticize Israel.  Where was the outrage about the nearly 620,000 people killed in the Syrian civil war?  What about the more than 375,000 people killed in the Yemen civil war between 2015 and early 2022?  The 30,000 children killed by Assad in Syria. Israel is the target because it is the Jewish state and that is antisemitism and hate.

Bernie Sanders doesn’t get it – he doesn’t understand evil, he doesn’t pay attention to the data, and despite being Jewish, he hates Jews.

We need people like Representative Ritchie Torres, who is outspoken in his support of Israel, the need to remove Hamas, and holding Hamas responsible for this war. He speaks out against conditions of aid to Israel.

Ritchie Torres on Israel (at the 1:20 mark). He is a vocal supporter of Israel and the right to defend herself and the need to eliminate Hamas.

Senator Hakeem Jeffries has spoken out loudly and clearly in support of Israel. Senator John Fetterman has been one of the most vocal supporters of Israel. He speaks out publicly about the need to remove Hamas, the fact that Hamas hides behind human shields, and the need to support Israel unconditionally.

Senator Fetterman speaks about Israel and Hamas at the 2:45 mark until the 5:20 mark. He is a very vocal supporter of Israel, the right to defend herself, and the need to eliminate Hamas.

My own Senator, Rick Scott, has been vocal about his support for Israel. He tweets daily about the hostages, never letting them fall out of our thoughts.

Senator Scott speaking powerfully in support of Israel. We need more leaders to do so.
Senator Scott is active on Twitter reminding everybody about the hostages

So now that I’ve written all this, so what? Other than venting my frustrations, anger, and disappointment, what is the point? The point is that each of us have the ability to make a difference. Each of us can learn the truth. Each of us can speak out loudly. Each of us can challenge those we know when they are spewing venom at Israel that is simply wrong and unfair. Each of us can confront those who we hear are speaking untruths, talking points without substance, and spewing hate. If you want to see how it’s done and how it is done well, watch this clip of Douglas Murray during an interview with Al Jazeera. He doesn’t let the person interviewing him get away with the lies and antisemitic comments she makes.

Douglas Murray is amazing as he takes her apart when she lies.

We can support Israel and the hostages. Wear the dogtags that say “Bring them home now” or “We will dance again” or both. Get a yellow ribbon pin and wear it. Put a piece of masking tape on your shirt every day with the number of days the hostages have been in captivity. Buy things from Israel to support their economy. Be loud and proud. The people who hate us aren’t going away. They are going to be out there spewing Jew hatred in the context of Israel at synagogues, JCCs, in the streets, at people’s homes, wherever they can be. If we hide, they win.

Rachel Goldberg, mother of hostage Hersch Goldberg Polin, started the masking tape. This was day 98. We are not past day 180.

When you are able, visit Israel. I have wanted to go since October 7th but have not because my family was worried about my safety. I love my family and was willing to wait so they felt better. I’m not willing to wait any longer. I’m going in May. You can join me if you want – it will be an amazing trip and very meaningful. I’m not sure how I will feel when I go to the site of the Nova music festival or one of the kibbutzim. I’m not sure what visiting Sderot will feel like this time – the police station, always a stop to see the rockets that were fired at them is no longer there. Being there for Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut will be different this time. It will be the third time I’ve been in Israel for Israel’s memorial day and Independence Day. I already know this one will be different. I am arriving the night before the trip begins and staying two days after. I wish I could go earlier and stay even longer. I’m going on the Momentum men’s trip. Join me. If you are a woman and want to go, there is also a women’s trip and I can connect you to it so you can go.

Unlike the past, we are not powerless. We are not lambs being taken to slaughter. We have the IDF. We have Israel. We have voices and don’t have to allow the lies to be all that people hear. When people cry for a ‘Ceasefire Now’ remind them that Israel has already agreed to the ceasefire, it’s Hamas who hasn’t agreed. Don’t push Israel for a ceasefire, push Hamas. Push Qatar who houses the leaders of Hamas. And remind them that this war can end immediately if Hamas would release the hostages and surrender.

Write and call your member of Congress and your Senators. Your voice matters. Every member of Congress that I have spoken with, every Senator I have met, have said how much those calls, emails, and letters mean. You have a voice, use it. If you think it doesn’t matter or people don’t notice you are wrong. I get asked about the number on the tape or my dogtags all the time. Be inspired by Cincinnati Reds Assistant Pitching Coach Alon Leichman and his baseball glove for this season. He is making a powerful statement, “Bring them home NOW”. You can join in making that powerful statement of support and stand up to the Jew haters who want us all gone.

A powerful statement on his baseball glove

Don’t be silent. Don’t hide. Don’t allow them to win. We’ve been down that road before and it doesn’t end well for us.

Hatikvah (the hope) and my Palestinian Friends

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

I remember being in high school and learning the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” and thinking to myself, what could be better than interesting times?  I hate being bored, so interesting times would be exciting and fun.

Ah, the naivety of the young. 

These are interesting times and as such are not so wonderful times.  The rise of hatred over the past decade is frightening.  The rise of antisemitism over the same time period and the exponential growth in the past 6 months is overwhelming.  I read and listen to so much discussion and none of it seems to focus on the real challenge and the real solution.

We have been taught not to like each other.  We have been taught that ‘the other’ is against us, will harm us, and that if they get what they want, we won’t get what we need.  This seems to be fairly universal, regardless of who you are and who ‘the other’ is.  We villainize them.  We make broad generalizations about them.  We make assumptions about them.  The one thing we don’t do is actually engage with people who are different from us.  That one thing we don’t do is the one thing that we need to do.

In November 2019, I had the honor and privilege of participating on an Encounter Immersive Experience.  We spent 4 days meeting with, listening to, and learning from members of Palestinian civil society.  I said it and used the word – Palestinian.  So let’s set some ground rules for the rest of this post. 

  1. The Palestinian people do exist.  They may have had different names over the years from Arabs to Bedouins, to Palestinians.  We, as Jews, used to be called Hebrews and Israelites.  Accept the fact that these people do exist, they live in what I will call ‘Greater Israel’, and aren’t going anywhere.
  • As a result of the 1967 war, Israel conquered territories.  This happens in many wars and is a reality of millenniums.  The area on the west bank of the Jordan River has different names.  For purposes here I am going to call is Judea and Samaria, the ancient names for that land.  Some may call in the West Bank.  Some may call it Palestine.  I am calling it Judea and Samaria.
  • Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are evil.  Most Palestinian people don’t like them.  I will discuss this later in this post however understand that there is a difference between Palestinian people and terrorists.  If you insist on generalizing that they are all people or are all terrorists, you can stop reading here if you want.  There is a difference.

Now back to my 4 days with leaders of Palestinian Civil Society.  I remember thinking how 4 days seemed so short.  This is such a complex issue; how could we only spend 4 days with them?  There were 4 of the most intense days of my life.  By the third day I was grateful that it was only 4 days because on how intense they were. 

During these 4 days, which I wrote about at the time, and you can find about 17 blog postings in the beginning of this blog from that time period, I had the ability to meet with many different people.  I had a chance to ask questions, listen to other points of view, and listed to people who had an entirely different history and narrative than I do.  I met people who I really like and stay in touch with even today.  I met people who I despised and who I am sure despised me only because I am Jewish.  I met people whose effort to change and challenge everything that they know were inspiring.  I met people who are a direct cause for the increase in hate, terrorism, and everything that led up to October 7th.  I saw things that made me sad.  Some were out of necessity, and some were simply terrible government policy.  It was a life altering experience that only made me a stronger and more powerful Zionist but also made me a better human being because I began a journey of understanding some of the deep challenges and how much work it will take to find a solution, to make peace, and to get beyond the damage that has been done in the past so that we can live in a different future.

I have written a lot about how October 7th has impacted and changed me.  I wrote about what seeing the 47-minute Hamas video was like.  Recently I saw the documentary about the massacre at the Nova Music Festival and I shared what that was like.  The past 6 months have been focused mostly on being a Jew in today’s world and in the United States.  It has been focused on the challenge of being a Zionist, loving Israel, in a world that is openly hostile, willingly believes lies and knowingly uses inflammatory language that is not accurate.  I have paid attention to my friends called up in the reserves, their children, either called up or who are currently serving in the IDF.  What I haven’t done is think too much about my Palestinian friends and what life has been like for them.

Over the past few weeks, I have been talking a lot with various people about the future.  As the US is demanding a permanent ceasefire and a 2 state solution (Hamas is the obstacle to the ceasefire as they have openly called for more October 7th massacres and still are holding hostages), I found myself thinking about who would be that partner for peace.  Obviously, Israel and the government have to make their own changes and hopefully that will come soon.  But what about the partner?  Who would it be? It’s not Hamas or Hezbollah.  It can’t be the Palestinian Authority (PA) who not only is corrupt and whose people hate them, still has not condemned the October 7th massacre nor have they had elections in 19 years!  So again, who can this partner be?

I found myself thinking of my friend Ali Abu Awwad, founder of Taghyeer, the Palestinian National Nonviolence Movement.  I met Ali on that trip and was amazing at what he said.  There was real leadership about building a country that would live in peace with Israel.  The line he said that I will always remember is, “Peace will not come through Jewish blood.  It will come through Jewish hearts.”  He then added, “we need to prove to the Jewish people that they can trust us because we have only showed them that they cannot.” 

Ali and me together when he visited Orlando and spoke to our community.

Imagine leaders who are not calling for ‘intifada’ or ‘jihad’ but instead are calling for peace and understanding.  Imagine leaders who came from a place of hatred and have overcome it to work with Jews, with Israeli, to build a better society.  Imagine a leader whose mother was a high-ranking PLO leader, who spent time in an Israeli prison at the same time as his mother and was able to move beyond hatred.  Imagine a leader whose brother was killed by the IDF and found peace and acceptance by spending time with a Rabbi whose son was killed by terrorists.  That is Ali Abu Awwad.  Just before Covid shut the world down, Ali spoke in Orlando.  The room was at least half Israeli.  They were primed for a fight.  They were primed to hear somebody blame Israel and make the Palestinians innocent victims.  They didn’t get what they expected.  They heard somebody taking responsibility for their part in the hate.  They heard somebody who gave hope for a different future. 

I realized I hadn’t reached out Ali in quite a while.  I hadn’t checked on him and asked how he was doing? then I began to think of some of the other Palestinian people that I met and considered friends.  I hadn’t reached out to them either.  What type of friend am I to be so overwhelmed with my own grief that I don’t check on my friends.  So I began doing so.  I reached out to Ali and am awaiting his reply.

I reached out to my friend Mahmoud.  His family owns the Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem.  I spent a day with Mahmoud in 2019 walking around East Jerusalem, visiting the Palestinian theater, learning about the Palestinian arts community, and having coffee and a conversation at the bookshop.  We finished the day at his home with another deep conversation.  I wrote about that day in this blog post.

The day with Mahmoud was difficult and very meaningful. It is something that I think about regularly because of the power of his words.  He is not a fundamentalist.  He does not hate Jews.  He does not want the destruction of Israel.  He wants to live freely.  He wants a government that represents him and takes care of him.  It was very difficult to hear him say that if there was a public works project in his neighborhood, he wouldn’t ask the municipality of Jerusalem to fix it because they wouldn’t.  And he wouldn’t/couldn’t ask the PA to fix it because even if they could, they wouldn’t.  He felt helpless so he would just get people together to fix it himself or live with it being broken. 

Mahmoud and the Educational Bookshop. I look forward to returning for another cup of coffee with him.

He talked about how challenging it was for him to be in West Jerusalem and how he felt there, how uncomfortable and that he was a focus of constant attention.  He shared how he didn’t feel he belonged or was welcome there and how much that bothered him.  It bothered him so much that he didn’t like going.  He talked about how he would go to Tel Aviv, and he felt he didn’t stand out, he wasn’t a focus of attention like he was in West Jerusalem.  And how that both made him feel welcome and how it also troubled him – why was it so different?  He could disappear in Tel Aviv and just be a person while he felt he couldn’t do that in West Jerusalem.  It didn’t sit well with me then – that’s not the Israel I love – yet with the rise of antisemitism in the past six months I have begun to understand it in a way that is very uncomfortable.

I watch what is happening in places like New York, California, Michigan, and Canada, and feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome as a Jew.  This isn’t the America that I love.  There are places around the world that I won’t visit now as a Jew.  This isn’t the world that I want to live in.

I think often of something that Mahmoud said to us in his home.  He said that if Zionism means that the Jews have a claim to the land and that the Palestinians also have a claim to the land, then he supports Zionism.  It was incredibly powerful when he said it and even more powerful today.  When a Palestinian man living in East Jerusalem can come to that type of understanding, it gives me great hope for the future.  Zionism isn’t colonialism.  It isn’t racism.  It is the belief that the Jews have a right to self-determination in our historic homeland.  In fact, the Declaration of Independence has some very clear definitions in it that need to be highlighted.  They include:

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

Simply put, we have a right to our own sovereign State and self-determination.  It’s very clear.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

While Israel is a Jewish state, it is a place for everybody who lives there.  It is based on freedom, justice and peace – this language is very different from the charter of Hamas and the PLO.  And it guarantees social and political rights to all.  Unlike Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and others, we do not want to a place for us alone. 

WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

Full and equal citizenship and due representation.  Powerful words.  Powerful ideals. 

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

That last line is so important, especially during these times.  While we may not have a current partner for peace with the Palestinians, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our part to find one.  The Abraham Accords and potential normalization with Saudia Arabia and Indonesia create even more opportunities.  We cannot let the horrors of the past stop us from the beauty of the future.  When I think of Mahmoud’s words back in 2019 and Ali’s passion and mission, that’s what I find myself going back to. 

We cannot let the horrors of the past stop us from the beauty of the future.

Ali and Mahmoud both want a world where people live in peace, together, building countries that care about their people.  They are both incredible leaders with a following.  We cannot afford to ignore them and let those who preach hate; Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the Palestinian Authority, etc., be in control. 

Mahmoud and I have been emailing and when I’m in Israel in May, we are planning for me to go visit him at his bookstore in East Jerusalem, walk around the neighborhood once again, talk, share a long cup of coffee or tea, maybe have lunch or dinner, and talk.  And talk.  And talk.  Learn from each other.  Deepen our friendship.  Because we both want the same thing.  A brighter future together.

One of my favorite people that I met on this trip was Mohammad.  I wrote about them in this blog post at the time.  He and his wife Hiba, and their baby son hosted us for dinner at their home in East Jerusalem.  They come from an amazing family.  Hiba’s family is the Muslim family that holds the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It’s an amazing story and if you don’t know it, you can begin to read about it here.  They both had Master’s degrees.  She worked for the UN, he worked for an NGO that took him into Gaza on a monthly basis. We formed an instant connection and talked at length about the different challenges.  The fact that the PA hasn’t had elections since 2005.  How corrupt the PA is and how they do nothing for the people except steal money.  How if there ever were elections, they could never vote for the PA, meaning that even Hamas would be a better choice because MAYBE they would do something for them (we haven’t talked about that since October 7th and I look forward to it in the near future) while they know the PA won’t do anything.  I asked about them running for office and their response was demoralizing as they didn’t believe that they would win and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to do anything without being killed.

Mohammad, Hiba, their son and me at their home in East Jerusalem.

We made a promise to get together again on my next trip so he could take me to his favorite restaurants, bakeries, ice cream shops, and we could continue our conversation.  Covid delayed my next trip, but I reached out before it, only to learn that Mohammad and his family had moved to Japan where he was working on a Ph.D.  We haven’t been able to coordinate his trips back with my trips back yet, but in our last correspondence we are going to try later this summer when they will be there for a few months.  In the meantime, they have a new baby that I want to meet.  He offered his home for me to stay when I visit, and I plan to take him up on the offer.  This is a beautiful family.  Wonderful people.  True friends.  And Palestinians.  It is possible. 

The last friend from this trip that I have been in contact with is a woman named Suzan.  She is a Palestinian Christian who lives in Bethlehem.  She also hosted us at her home for dinner where we had an amazing conversation.  She worries about the declining number of Christians in Bethlehem.  She worries about the role of women in Bethlehem.  She is privileged because she also has a German passport so is able to travel much easier. 

Suzan (far left in the black dress) and four of us at her home for dinner.

Suzan is an artist and runs an art studio.  The Bethlehem Fair Trade Artisans shop is an amazing place highlighting a variety of artists, mostly women, and I encourage you to check it out and if you see something you like, to purchase it. (Full disclosure – I encourage you to purchase as much as you can from Israeli artists and Israeli businesses. I have purchased many pieces from Israeli artists since October 7th. If you need help finding Israeli artists or businesses, please let me know and I’ll be happy to share my favorites and many others with you.)

Her focus is on women artists and fair-trade practices.  She was very frustrated that she was being told by the city government that her future shows and community events could not include Jewish women.  She told us that she didn’t care what they said, she was still going to invite the Jewish women to participate.  And she was going to continue to sell the works of Jewish women artists in her shop.  She didn’t care what they said, she was going to do what was right.  What was moral.  What was ethical.

Put those words together.  Moral.  Ethical.  Palestinian.  Generalizations simply don’t work.  There are terrorists.  There are people who hate and are evil.  I have met many of them, especially on that trip in 2019.  There are also many good people.  Great people.  Caring people.  People who you’d want as your neighbor.  As your friend. 

I hope to see Suzan either in May or later this year.  When I met her, it was just after she harvested her Olive trees so I saw the harvest.  Maybe this time I can see the trees filled with olives, filled with life.  Wouldn’t that be an incredible symbol.

Suzan with her harvest of olives from her trees

These are four examples of wonderful, amazing people.  People I call friends.  People I would be honored to have as neighbors.  People I trust.  Good people. 

I met terrorists.  You can read about my lunch with a member of Hamas, a murderer, and a member of the Al Aqsa Brigade in this post.  There is a difference between my friends who are Palestinian and the terrorists.  And I met people who were terrorists and are on a journey towards something different.  There is hope for the future but only if we are willing to do something different than the past.  That difference isn’t just up to us but it can start with us.  We can change our language.  We can use our contacts to meet Palestinians who want peace, who don’t hate, who don’t support Hamas or the PA, who will invite you into their home, share a meal, a coffee, and who you will come to really like.  We can help them rise up and together we can ensure the terrorists aren’t in power, don’t have the ability to kill Jews and oppress the Palestinian people. 

I’m not being pollyannish.  I’m not being naïve.  I am being hopeful.  I am talking about creating a systemic change.  I’m talking about taking action to stop the funding to UNRWA and the PA.  Ensure a new government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’ is set up in Gaza (sound familiar?)  We can lobby our government to force elections in Judea and Samaria, so Abbas’s 4-year term finally comes to an end before he serves 20 years of a 4 year term.  We can encourage the leaders in Israel to work with these leaders who want peace in a methodical manner to build trust.  As Ronald Reagan famously said, ‘Trust, but verify’. 

The Israeli national anthem is Hatikvah, the hope.  Let’s make sure we don’t lost hope.  Then the terrorists win and we all lose. 

IDF soldiers singing Hatikvah after October 7th just before they prepare to enter Gaza and defend Israel.

I look forward to sharing stories, pictures, and maybe even some videos and conversations with my Ali, Mahmoud, Mohammad and Hiba, and Suzan.  As deeply as October 7th has damaged and changed me, I won’t let it drive out hope.  Hope in the good people.  Hope for a better future.  And in the words of Theodore Herzl, “If you will it, it is no dream.”  I’m going to put the work in.  I hope you decide to as well.

PS

I came across this video of IDF soldiers rapping about the lies that are told about them. It’s very powerful and timely.

Sadly, it was recorded 10 years ago, showing that these allegations have a long rooted basis in antisemitism, Jew hatred, and bigotry. Enjoy the video as it’s powerful.

Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the 4 sons from the Seder.

Posted on by Keith Dvorchik

I do a lot of reading these days to find both accurate and interesting information.  I use a lot of sources and enjoy reading differing viewpoints as I can always learn more.  One of the people I enjoy reading is former NBA all-star and Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  While I don’t agree with every position he takes and think he misses many things in some of his analyses, he also makes me think and I would enjoy sitting down with him over a meal to discuss where we differ and why.

In his message today, he highlighted a quote by the great Muhammad Ali that resonated with me.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

As Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote, “That’s how he lived his whole life: Ignoring personal consequences to help others. He inspired millions across the world.  I was one of those millions.”

As a child, I loved watching Ali fight.  He was a master class in showmanship.  More than watching him fight, I loved listening to him talk and especially his interviews with the great sports journalist, Howard Cosell.  I could listen to them talk with each other for hours, if they would have continued that long.  Ali was a poet who fought.  Cosell was a brilliant foil doing sports journalism.  Together they defined sports in the 1970s. 

Howard Cosell roasting Muhammad Ali in 1974.  Their love and respect for each other is clear as they smile and laugh through the comments about each other

Some of the great highlights of Ali and Cosell during different interviews.  Two very different people from very different backgrounds who found common ground, respected each other, became friends, and appreciated their differences.

Despite having incredible relationships with Howard Cosell and Billy Crystal, Ali also had a challenging relationship with the Jewish community.  He had no problem speaking out loudly against Jewish promoters and slamming “Zionist control of the world”, but he also had a Jewish grandson and attended his bar mitzvah, allowing his grandson to show him the Torah and explore it together.  He went to Israel and lobbying for the release of terrorists yet also publicly appealed to Muslim extremists to release Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl and attended Pearl’s funeral. 

This imitation of Ali by Billy Crystal always makes me smile, both because of the talent of Crystal but also because I could imagine Ali laughing at it and wishing he had come up with the idea first.  When Ali turned 50, he had Crystal perform at his birthday party.

In 1996, before lighting the Olympic flame in Atlanta, Muhammad Ali publicly stated:

“My mother was a Baptist. She believed Jesus was the son of God, and I don’t believe that. But even though my mother had a religion different from me, I believe that, on Judgment Day, my mother will be in heaven.

“There are Jewish people who lead good lives. When they die, I believe they’re going to heaven. It doesn’t matter what religion you are if you’re a good person you’ll receive God’s blessing. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all serve the same God. We just serve him in different ways.

“Anyone who believes in One God should also believe that all people are part of one family. God created us all. And all people have to work to get along.”

We live in very challenging times.  Ali did as well, as a black man who converted to Islam, refused the draft, spoke his mind, lost everything, and earned it back based on his beliefs.  Despite his challenges with the Jewish community, there is much we can learn from Muhammad Ali in how we choose to speak, act, and behave in our own challenging times of today.

The attacks on October 7th in Israel have fundamentally altered who I am as a person.  I don’t live in Israel so how can it have done this?  I have always been a passionate Zionist.  Since there is so much confusion about what this means, I am going to be clearer and define this.  It means I believe that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland.  I believe the Jewish people have a right to self-determination.  I believe that Judea and Samaria are the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.  And I believe that no matter your religion or lack of religion, if you want to be a citizen of Israel, you should be allowed to pursue citizenship.  I love that there are Arab-Israelis and Druze-Israelis.  It’s wonderful to visit the Baha’i Gardens in Haifa and learn about the Baha’i Israelis and their community and beliefs.  There are Christian-Israelis and Bedouin Israelis.  There are Ethiopian-Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis.  The common thing they all have in common is that they are Israeli.

Since October 7th, I have seen an incredible amount of antisemitism and hate in the world.  It fascinates me in so many ways.  In many ways, the 4 sons/children from the Passover Seder can be an appropriate analogy.  There are those who always have been antisemites and now don’t have to pretend.  These are the wicked son/child. They are easy to see and identify.  They are the ones who demand proof of Hamas raping women when they spoke out against Brett Cavanaugh.  They stood chanting ‘believe all women’ and then don’t believe Jewish women.  They present a challenge as I’m not sure there is anything anybody can do to about them.  The slight hope that I have for these people goes back to my experience with Combatants for Peace.  I became aware of them in 2019 during a trip to Israel where I spent 4 days meeting with leaders of Palestinian civil society.  The members I met were across the spectrum in terms of where they came from and where they were at that time.  All had begun from a place of hate.  Hatred of Palestinians or hatred of Jews.  All were on a quest to leave hate behind.  Some were more successful than others.  All were trying.  For those who live in hate and recent times are enabling them to express it freely, I can only hope that at some point they decide that perhaps there is a different way to live and are willing to try to find that path.

It is sad but true that Jewish women don’t count to those people

There are a larger group of people who are behaving as antisemites, but I don’t think really are.  They often begin from an honorable place, such as I don’t to see civilians die.  I have some friends who are like this.  As a result, they call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire to stop civilians dying in war.  However, they miss the entire context.  They don’t assign responsibility to Hamas, who not only began the war but also uses civilians as human shields, turns hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes into military targets.  They don’t listen to the people in the north of Gaza, finally free of Hamas, who encourage Israel to finish the war by destroying Hamas.  They cite the starvation and need for humanitarian aid without realizing that the aid is coming in, however UNRWA makes sure that Hamas gets it and Hamas then keeps what they need and put the rest of the black market at exorbitant prices.  I have from people on the ground in Gaza who acknowledge there is plenty of food there, it’s just either in the tunnels with Hamas or so grossly overpriced on the black market that the ordinary people can’t afford it.  Sending in more aid won’t solve this problem and this group of people simply isn’t looking at facts while leading with their heart.  We all want the war to end.  We all want the death to stop.  We all want peace.  It cannot and will not happen until the hostages are released and Hamas leadership surrenders.  Those who call for a ‘Ceasefire Now’ or an” Immediate and permanent ceasefire” or “an immediate 2 state solution” miss the basic facts that:

  1. A ceasefire has to be on both sides and Hamas has already said they will do more October 7th massacres.  Hamas has also violated every ceasefire that Israel has been agreed to with them.  
  2. Hamas will not agree to, nor will they adhere to a permanent cease fire.  They have said this publicly and many times.  Why would Israel agree to something that would only be binding on them?
  3. There can be no ceasefire, nor can there be anything permanent while the hostages remain in Gaza.  Their release must occur for any ceasefire to be considered. 
  4. If Hamas remains in power, the Palestinian people in Gaza, those that these people profess to care about, will suffer greatly.  The Gazans in the northern part, who are now free of Hamas, are crying for Israel to finish the job, eliminate Hamas, and grant them freedom. 
  5. You can’t give people who call for your destruction, who commit actual genocide, who are supported by Iran, who don’t respect borders, who are known to be corrupt and steal from their people, their own state as a reward for committing genocide. 

These people are the simple son/child, who does not know.  They are so ignorant they don’t even realize they don’t know.  They use words like genocide and apartheid without knowing the meaning and when they clearly don’t apply.  They say things like, “Ceasefire now, Intifada” not realizing that they are telling Israel to put down their weapons while telling the terrorists to pick their up and kill Jews.  They chant “from the River to the Sea” without knowing what river, what sea, or that what they are advocating for is the elimination of Israel.  They accuse Israel of genocide while they, themselves, are actually advocating for genocide!  If they are truly antisemitic, it’s often because this is the new, cool, hip thing their friends are doing.  They aren’t filled with hate; they are filled with stupidity.  If they are willing to learn, there is a chance for them to understand.  If they aren’t willing to learn, it is more likely they will end up like the wicked son/child. 

They are so simple that they don’t even realize that Hamas would throw them from the roof of a building to their death for being in drag or being gay.

At the Seder table, we talk about the son/child who doesn’t know how to ask.  I remember thinking to myself for years, ‘how is this different from the simple son/child?’  What’s happened since October 7th has shown me the difference.  While the simple child doesn’t know enough to question what they are told and believe whatever they are old, the one who doesn’t know how to ask is oblivious to what’s going on around them.  These are the people who don’t say anything at all about the atrocities committed by Hamas.  They don’t comment or say anything about the incredible antisemitism we are seeing on college campuses or in major cities.  A hospital protested and vandalized because it has a Jewish name doesn’t raise their ire nor does it result in a comment.  People assaulted because they are Jewish or are wearing a kippah or a Jewish symbol isn’t even considered by them.  They live in a world where things like this don’t exist.  They aren’t antisemitic, they are totally disconnected from the reality of Jew hatred.  These are the people where we have the responsibility to show them what is happening, to engage them in conversation to educate them.  If we allow them to live in lala land, then we are responsible.  The actress and comedienne Tiffany Haddish who discovered she was Jewish later in life has taken an active role in this.  She isn’t afraid to talk about being Jewish and even publicly went to Israel recently to see and learn for herself.  She even had her own ‘Black Mitzvah’. She is the example to people who don’t even know how to ask about what they can do.  If she can do it, they can do it.

Since discovering that her mother was actually Jewish, Tiffany Haddish has embraced this part of her.

The final child is the wise one. This child asks for specific details about how to observe the holiday.  In the post October 7th world, these are the people that continue to seek truth and challenge what they are told.  They aren’t afraid to learn.  They understand the difference between Jews and the Israeli government.  They don’t take words like genocide, apartheid, and occupation at face value.  I want to be clear that this doesn’t mean they defend Israel no matter what.  They question.  They challenge.  They want to learn.  I urge us all to strive to be the wise child.  Don’t just believe what you hear or read.  Be open to conversations.  I had this happen regarding something it was reported that Turkish President Erdogan said.  A friend, who is actually in Turkey right now, let me know that this was a translation error/issue and that he would explain in detail this week.  I look forward to having him explain to me the translation issue and put it in another context. 

Muhammad Ali changed his name to mark his significant change upon converting to Islam.  The man named Cassius Clay ceased to exist and all that was left was a man named Muhammad Ali.  The me that existed before October 7th no longer exists.  The horrors of that day and what has followed has created a different version of me.  In order to mark that transition, I haven’t changed my name.  But I have marked my body.  I have wanted to get something that would mark that change for me and for everybody who saw it.  So last week, while in DC, I went with a friend to her tattoo artist and got two very personal and very meaningful tattoos.  One is the quote from Mia Schem, a hostage taken from the Nova music festival and released after 55 days.  She said, and then got tattooed on her arm, the words I will never forget.  “We will dance again.”  I now have those words on my right forearm.  I also saw a design memorializing the Nova music festival.  I can imagine being there listening to bands that I love.  I can imagine my children being at that music festival as they love concerts and live music.  So on my left forearm I got a tree with the word Nova and the date, 7-10-23 (written the Israeli way) tattooed.  They are forever reminders to me and those who see them both the horrors of October and the resilience of the Jewish people.  We will not go away.  We will continue to be Jewish and continue to thrive.  I am reminded of that every time I look at my arms.  Am Yisrael Chai!

Finally, in order to add some light to the darkness, I saw this in Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s writings today and after watching it, felt I had to share it.  In the Netherlands, cows are kept inside for 6 months of the year to protect them from the harsh weather.  On the day they are released to the outside, crowds show up to witness the ‘Cow Dance’

Try hard not to smile.  I will bet you can’t.