Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 8, 2023

PITTSBURGH -- Rabbi Jonathan Perlman took the witness stand Thursday wearing the yarmulke he had on the day a gunman burst into his Pittsburgh synagogue during Sabbath services and began shooting anyone he could find.

The skullcap Jews wear as a reminder of God's presence fell off during the Oct. 27, 2018, attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, which was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Authorities kept it as evidence for years, and Perlman, the rabbi for one of the three congregations who shared the building, only recently got it back.

As he recalled the terrifying events of that day, Perlman, 59, also assumed his role as a teacher to explain the stitched Hebrew lettering on his yarmulke, which read, There is nothing aside from Him,

This is a God who is present to all aspects of creation," he told the federal jury.

It was one of several moments during the trial over a brutal act of violence against Jews in which survivors used the opportunity to educate the jury about their faith a show of defiance before the man who tried to destroy them and who has expressed little emotion while seated at the defense table.

Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver from the Pittsburgh suburb of Baldwin, faces 63 federal charges related to the killings of 11 worshippers, who came from all three of the congregations who used the synagogue New Light, Dor Hadash and the Tree of Life. If convicted of certain charges, which include 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, Bowers could face the death penalty.

Prosecutors say Bowers expressed a hatred of Jews online and at the synagogue on the day of the attack. One of his attorneys acknowledged during opening statements Tuesday that Bowers carried out the attack but tried to cast doubt on whether the hate crimes charges were applicable. His defense teams legal maneuverings have focused not so much on preventing his conviction as on preventing his execution.

Perlman, the rabbi of New Light Congregation, recounted arriving at the congregation's basement sanctuary in the synagogue shortly before worship began on that Oct 27. Member Melvin Wax led in an opening prayer in which we talk about how grateful we are to start a new day, he recalled.

Perlman then heard what he immediately recognized as gunfire coming from elsewhere in the building. I said, Were in danger, follow me.' He guided Wax and two other worshippers, Carol Black and Barry Werber, into a nearby storage room in the labyrinthine building.

He said Wax, who was 87 years old and hard of hearing, wanted to see what had happened. I said, Please dont. Stay inside.' He didn't listen to me.

As Black and Werber testified on Wednesday, Wax opened the door to look out and was shot and killed.

Perlman had left the area and was trying to find my own hiding space when he saw Tree of Life member Stephen Weiss. He called Weiss a man of extraordinary courage for coming down to the New Light area, even while the attack was underway on the main floor, to make sure New Light members in the basement knew what was happening.

Perlman eventually found a side exit, climbed over a fence into a neighboring yard and found police, informing them of where the others were hiding. With the attack still ongoing, they told me to get the hell out of here, and he went home.

Weiss told jurors Wednesday that he was one of 12 worshippers that day at the start of Tree of Life's service, which was being held in a separate chapel. He knew the head count because, as a ritual leader of the congregation, he made sure there was the required minimum a minyan of 10 adult worshippers in the room. After worshippers heard a loud crash, two them went to see what happened. Weiss went to the chapel door but stayed in the room to maintain the minyan.

He heard gunfire, saw shell casings clattering on the floor and turned back into the room, where Rabbi Jeffrey Myers was evacuating those who were able to move quickly and urging the more frail members to get down.

Weiss escaped through a door at the front of the chapel and, after going downstairs to warn New Light members, found his own way outside.

He noted that although the synagogue's door was locked on weekdays, when the office staff could buzz people in, it was routinely unlocked on the Sabbath.

We prided ourselves on having our doors open to all people, he said.

Asked by a prosecutor if his Tree of Life congregation has been able to gather a minyan as easily since the attack, Weiss said it hasn't.

We dont have the same attendance from those members who were very reliably there, he said. When asked why not, he said: Because they have been killed.

Seven people, including five police officers, were injured in the attack.

One of them, Officer Daniel Mead, testified Thursday that he had just reported to duty when he heard the call about an active shooter at the synagogue. He and his partner, Michael Smigda, rushed to the scene and, moving cautiously along the wall, Mead said he turned a corner in front of a glass entrance and was immediately met by gunfire.

When I stepped out, stuff hit the fan, he said.

I can remember plain as day, Mead said. I can hear the shot. I can see the muzzle flash. This all happened so quick.

Mead said his hand was dangling like a rag doll, so he went to a waiting ambulance for treatment. He said the bullet shattered bones throughout his hand, and that he hasn't been able to return to work as an officer.

Asked why he rushed to the synagogue that day, he said: Its what we do.

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Find more AP coverage of the synagogue shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/pittsburgh-synagogue-massacre

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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Posted By admin on June 8, 2023

Meeting Rabbi Gershon Edelstein earlier this year had a profound impact on my life. As someone who had limited exposure to gedolim, this encounter presented a unique opportunity to interact with a centenarian talmid chacham and gain valuable insights. However, the challenge lay in selecting the right questions to make the most of this brief meeting. Throughout my flight to Israel, I grappled with which inquiries would be most fitting and how I could maximize this precious occasion.

Upon arriving in Israel, a friend picked me up from the airport and brought me to Bnei Brak, where Rabbi Edelstein resided. We attended Maariv services, squeezing into a small room with approximately 35 people. Positioned near the divider separating us from the revered rav, I observed him attentively following each word in his siddur, demonstrating profound reverence, simplicity, and focus. Witnessing his prayerful demeanor offered a fresh perspective on approaching prayer, inspiring me to adopt a similar practice of following along with my finger slowly and thoughtfully. Trying this method myself, I discovered its difficulty, far exceeding my initial expectations.

After the prayer service concluded, all participants had the opportunity to receive a blessing from the rosh yeshiva by walking past him. Eagerly awaiting our turn, my son and I anticipated a more private audience where I could present the three questions I had carefully prepared.

Over the course of 36 hours, I deliberated on the questions I would ask. Although one question lacked thorough consideration and another seemed overly simplistic, the third question encapsulated a long-standing concern I had regarding leadership and the Orthodox Jewish world in general. Despite having posed this question to several distinguished rabbis in the United States, I had yet to receive a satisfactory answer that could provide the comfort and clarity I sought in navigating the complexities of the modern landscape.

However, everything changed when Rabbi Edelstein responded briefly yet insightfully to my third question. Walking out of his house, I felt a renewed sense of confidence, clarity, and tremendous inspiration. Hearing such a sincere and meaningful response from the gadol hador left me with a profound sense of chizuk, ready to return to my work in America. (The question and his answer were both too personal and too complex to share publicly.)

What is it about Rav Edelstein that has prompted hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide to mourn his passing and experience such an immense loss? On an individual level, it is the thousands of personal encounters like mine, where he provided clarity, insight, and guidance to numerous members of the Jewish community. However, on a broader scale, his departure represents a loss of a direct connection to Hashem and the profound clarity of thought that accompanies great Talmudic scholars.

Throughout his remarkable century-long life, Rabbi Edelstein dedicated himself to the Jewish people, teaching Torah, and disseminating a wholesome message. His central tenet emphasized that a life of Torah should be one filled with nachas (joy) and love. Circulating videos showcase his unwavering belief that Torah should be an enjoyable experience for children and that in todays world, we must strive to eschew negative and aggressive tactics, instead focusing on connection, love, kindness, and inspiration to educate the next generation.

One particular video exemplifies Rabbi Edelsteins values in a truly remarkable manner. In this video, he is posed with a question concerning the predicament parents face when their 12-year-old child consistently struggles to awaken for davening. The daily battle between parents and children over waking up for davening is a relatable issue for nearly every parent. Davening with a minyan holds great significance in our avodas Hashem, both on a practical level and as an expectation within yeshivas. If a young boy fails to wake up and join the minyan, he not only misses out on an important daily opportunity to connect with Hashem, but also risks compromising his standing within his yeshiva. Moreover, our sages have delineated specific times for the recitation of Krias Shema and Shemoneh Esrei, and by oversleeping, a child would be neglecting these essential daily mitzvos. Simply put, waking up on time constitutes a fundamental and crucial component of successful Jewish living.

In this particular video, a concerned father seeks guidance from the rosh yeshiva on how to address the issue of his childs persistent tardiness in awakening for davening.

Here is his response Only in pleasant ways, without forcing them. The questioner asks, Should I nag them? To which Rav Edelstein replies, No. No nagging. Kids know whats good; they need encouragement and motivation to do good and to be interested. Forcing causes the opposite and doesnt help at all. You are not allowed to force; forced chinuch is backwards, with opposite results. Chinuch should be interesting, friendly and loving. Forcing the child will just backfire, only in a pleasant way, a child should not feel any criticism and judgment. Kids will pick up on criticism it hurts them tremendously and it causes the child to go off the derech! They should not feel criticism, its an important foundation of chinuch. A child shouldnt be criticized thats the rule of chinuch.

The educational philosophy articulated by Rav Edelstein in this particular video resonates deeply with the impression I formed during our meeting. He embodied the belief that our Torah, our sacred teachings, should be approached as Deracheha darchei noam a path of pleasantness. This philosophy embraces the idea that through embracing the pleasant and joyous aspects of Torah, one can provide meaningful leadership to a generation yearning for solace and guidance. A gadol hador of his caliber possesses the ability to instill confidence in a father grappling with the challenges posed by his consistently tardy son. Moreover, Rabbi Edelstein possessed a unique capacity to address not only individual concerns like mine, but also the myriad substantive issues that constantly crossed his desk in his role as a communal leader.

My personal sense of loss upon Rabbi Edelsteins passing reflects the collective mourning of our nation. We recognize that losing an individual with such clarity and connection to Hashem diminishes our collective existence, limiting our ability to forge similar connections in his absence. Let us all endeavor to live a Torah-infused life as he exemplified a life characterized by kindness, love, and an appreciation for the profound.

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It is often asked why Jews did not make greater attempts at resistance. Principally, they had no access to arms and were surrounded by native anti-Semitic populations who might collaborate with the Nazis or, even if they were opposed to German occupation, may have been willing to condone the elimination of the Jews and were reticent to put their own lives as risk. In essence, the Jews stood alone against a German war machine zealously determined to carry out the final solution. Moreover, the Nazis went to great lengths to disguise their ultimate plans. Because of the German policy of collective reprisal, Jews in the ghettos often hesitated to resist. This changed when the Germans ordered the final liquidation of the ghettos and residents recognized the imminence of their deaths.

Jews resisted in the forests, in the ghettos, and even in the death camps. They fought alone and alongside resistance groups in France, Yugoslavia, and Russia. As a rule, full-scale uprisings occurred only at the end, when Jews realized the inevitability of impending death. On April 19, 1943, nine months after the massive deportations of Warsaws Jews to Treblinka had begun, the Jewish resistance, led by 24-year-old Mordecai Anielewicz, mounted the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Vilna partisan leader Abba Kovner, recognizing the full intent of Nazi policy toward the Jews, called for resistance in December 1941 and organized an armed force that fought the Germans in September 1943. In March of that year, a resistance group led by Willem Arondeus, a homosexual artist and author, bombed a population registry in Amsterdam to destroy the records of Jews and others sought by the Nazis. At Treblinka and Sobibor, uprisings occurred just as the extermination process was slowing down, and the remaining prisoners were fearful that they would soon be killed. This was also true at Auschwitz, where the Sonderkommando (Special Commando), the prisoner unit that worked in the vicinity of the gas chambers, destroyed a crematorium just as the killing was coming to an end in 1944.

By the winter of 194445, with Allied armies closing in, desperate SS officials tried frantically to evacuate the camps and conceal what had taken place. They wanted no eyewitnesses remaining. Prisoners were moved westward, forced to march toward the heartland of Germany. There were more than 50 different marches from Nazi concentration and extermination camps during this final winter of Nazi domination, some covering hundreds of miles. The prisoners were given little or no food and water and almost no time to rest or take care of bodily needs. Those who paused or fell behind were shot. On January 16, 1945, just days before the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz, the Nazis marched some 60,000 prisoners to Wodzisaw and put them on freight trainsmany of them on open cars to the camps at Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen. Nearly one in four died en route.

In April and May of 1945, American and British forces en route to military targets entered the concentration camps in the west and caught a glimpse of what had occurred. Even though tens of thousands of prisoners had died, these camps were far from the most deadly. Still, even for the battle-weary soldiers who thought they had already seen the worst, the sights and smells and the emaciated survivors they encountered left an indelible impression. At Dachau they came upon 28 railway cars stuffed with dead bodies. Conditions were so horrendous at Bergen-Belsen that some 28,000 inmates died after being freed, and the entire camp had to be burned to prevent the spread of typhus. Allied soldiers had to perform tasks for which they were ill-trained: to heal the sick, comfort the bereaved, and bury the dead. As for the victims, liberation was not a moment of exultation. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, recalled, Everything was unreal. Unlikely as in a dream. Only laterand for some it was very much later or neverwas liberation actually liberating.

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anti-Semitism: Nazi anti-Semitism and the Holocaust

The Allies, who had early and accurate information on the murder of the Jews, made no special military efforts to rescue them or to bomb the camps or the railroad tracks leading to them. (See Sidebar: Why Wasnt Auschwitz Bombed?) They felt that only after victory could something be done about the Jewish situation. Warnings were issued, condemnations were made, plans proceeded to try the guilty after the war, but no concrete action was undertaken specifically to halt the genocide. An internal memo to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., from his general counsel in January 1944 characterized U.S. State Department policy as acquiescence to the murder of the European Jews. In response Morgenthau helped spur the creation of the War Refugee Board, which made a late and limited effort to rescue endangered Jews, mainly through diplomacy and subterfuge.

Although the Germans killed victims from several groups, the Holocaust is primarily associated with the murder of the Jews. Only the Jews were targeted for total annihilation, and their elimination was central to Hitlers vision of the New Germany. The intensity of the Nazi campaign against the Jews continued unabated to the very end of the war and at points even took priority over German military efforts.

When the war ended, Allied armies found between seven and nine million displaced persons living outside their own countries. More than six million people returned to their native lands, but more than one million refused repatriation. Some had collaborated with the Nazis and feared retaliation. Others feared persecution under the new communist regimes. For the Jews, the situation was different. They had no homes to return to. Their communities had been shattered, their homes destroyed or occupied by strangers, and their families decimated and dispersed. First came the often long and difficult physical recuperation from starvation and malnutrition, then the search for loved ones lost or missing, and finally the question of the future.

Many Jews lived in displaced-persons camps. At first they were forced to dwell among their killers because the Allies did not differentiate on the basis of religion, merely by nationality. Their presence on European soil and the absence of a country willing to receive them increased the pressure on Britain to resolve the issue of a Jewish homeland in British-administered Palestine. Both well-publicized and clandestine efforts were made to bring Jews to Palestine. In fact, it was not until after the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 and the liberalization of American immigration laws in 1948 and 1949 (allowing the admission of refugees from Europe) that the problem of finding homes for the survivors was solved.

Upon liberating the camps, many Allied units were so shocked by what they saw that they meted out spontaneous punishment to some of the remaining SS personnel. Others were arrested and held for trial. The most famous of the postwar trials occurred in 194546 at Nrnberg, the former site of Nazi Party rallies. There the International Military Tribunal tried 22 major Nazi officials for war crimes, crimes against the peace, and a new category of crimescrimes against humanity. This new category encompassed

murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian populationpersecution on political, racial, or religious groundswhether or not in violation of the domestic laws of the country where perpetrated.

The murder of the Jews was not a centrepiece of the trials, though the use of film of the concentration camps was emotionally the most powerful moment. The prosecutors conducted trials of documents and, as a by-product of the trials, produced a massive documentation still used by historians.

After the first trials, 185 defendants were divided into 12 groups, including physicians responsible for medical experimentation (but not so-called euthanasia), judges who preserved the facade of legality for Nazi crimes, Einsatzgruppe leaders, commandants of concentration camps, German generals, and business leaders who profited from slave labour. The defendants made up only a miniscule fraction of those who had perpetrated the crimes, however. In the eyes of many, their trials were a desperate, inadequate, but necessary effort to restore a semblance of justice in the aftermath of so great a crime. The trials have been termed imperfect justice, symbolic justice, and representational justice. Yet the Nrnberg trials established the precedent, later enshrined by international convention, that crimes against humanity are punishable by an international tribunal.

Over the ensuing half-century, additional trials further documented the nature of the crimes and had a public as well as a judicial impact. The 1961 trial in Jerusalem of Adolf Eichmann, who supervised the deportations of Jews to the death camps, not only brought him to justice but made a new generation of Israelis keenly aware of the Holocaust. Controversial from its inceptionbecause Eichmann had been kidnapped from Argentina by Israeli intelligence agents rather than being formally extradited and because he was tried by the State of Israel, a state that did not exist when he perpetrated his deedsthe trial, broadcast on television internationally in the days before satellite television, also spurred an intellectual debate over the nature of evil and of the evildoer. The trial allowed victims to confront the perpetrator and bring him to justice. The Auschwitz trials held in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, between 1963 and 1976 increased the German publics knowledge of the killing and its pervasiveness. The trials in France of Klaus Barbie (1987) and Maurice Papon (199698) and the revelations of Franois Mitterrand in 1994 concerning his indifference toward Vichy Frances anti-Jewish policy called into question the notion of French resistance and forced the French to deal with the issue of collaboration. These trials also became precedents as world leaders considered responses to other crimes against humanity in places such as Bosnia and Rwanda.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish migr to the United States and an international lawyer, wrote compellingly of the need to name the crime and, once named, to outlaw it. The word he chose was genocide, which combined genus (gen) and murder (cide) to form the murder of a people. He pushed his agenda, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through the United Nations, which approved it in December 1948. He believed that if the crime were named, defined, and outlawed, it would not be tolerated by the civilized world.

The Genocide Convention prohibits the killing of persons belonging to a group (the Final Solution), causing grievous bodily or mental harm to members of a group, deliberately enforcing upon the group living conditions that could lead to complete or partial extermination (ghettoization and starvation), enforcing measures to prevent births among the group (sterilization), and forcibly removing children from the group and transferring them to another group (the Germanization of Polish children such as that which occurred in Zamo). In subsequent years many bystander governments have tried not to use the term genocide while such action was arguably occurring, so as to dampen the expectation of outside intervention.

The defeat of Nazi Germany left a bitter legacy for the German leadership and the German people. Germans had committed crimes in the name of the German people. German culture and the German leadershippolitical, intellectual, social, and religioushad participated or been complicit in the Nazi crimes or had been ineffective in opposing them. In an effort to rehabilitate the good name of the German people, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) firmly established a democracy that protected the human rights of all its citizens and made financial reparations to the Jewish people in an agreement passed by parliament in 1953. West German democratic leaders made special efforts to achieve friendly relations with Israel. In the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), the communist leaders attempted to absolve their population of responsibility for the crimes, portraying themselves as the victims of the Nazis and Nazism as a manifestation of capitalism. The first gesture of the postcommunist parliament of East Germany, however, was an apology to the Jewish people. At one of its first meetings in the newly renovated Reichstag building in 1999, the German parliament voted to erect a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. The first state visitor to Berlin after its reestablishment as capital of a united Germany was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the history of the Holocaust continued to be unsettling. The Swiss government and its bankers had to confront their role as bankers to the Nazis and in recycling gold and valuables taken from the victims. Under the leadership of German Prime Minister Gerhard Schrder, German corporations and the German government established a fund to compensate Jews and non-Jews who had worked in German slave labour and forced labour programs during the war. Insurance companies were negotiating over claims from descendants of policyholders killed during the warclaims that the companies denied immediately after the war by imposing prohibitive conditions, such as the presentation of a death certificate specifying the time and place of death of the insured. In several eastern European countries, negotiations addressed Jewish property that the Nazis had confiscated during the war but that could not be returned under the regions communist governments. Artworks stolen during the war and later sold on the basis of dubious records were the subject of legal struggles to secure their return to the original owners or their heirs. The German government continued to pay reparationsfirst awarded in 1953to individual Jews and the Jewish people to acknowledge responsibility for the crimes committed in the name of the German people.

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As the Khoswan family slept, the Israeli military dropped three GBU-39 bombs into their sixth-floor apartment. One of the bombs exploded just outside the parents bedroom, leaving the apartment looking as if a tornado had swept through, killing three family members.

But they were not the stated target of the attack earlier this month.

The Israeli military had dropped the bombs into their home to assassinate a commander of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who lived in the apartment below.

Jamal Khoswan, a dentist, Mirvat Khoswan, a pharmacist, and their son, a 19-year-old dental student, were killed in the strike as well as the Islamic Jihad commander who lived downstairs, Tareq Izzeldeen, and two of his children, a girl, 11, and a boy, 9.

Commanders have been targeted before, Menna Khoswan, 16, said this month at a memorial service for her father at the hospital where he served as chairman of the board. But to target the commander and those around him, honestly this is something we didnt expect.

Israel says that it conducts precision strikes aimed at taking out armed groups commanders or operation sites, and that it does not target civilians. But the airstrikes are often conducted in heavily populated areas, and many Palestinians in Gaza say they amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

Israel also destroys entire residential buildings or towers if it believes an armed group has an office or apartment there, although it usually issues an evacuation warning beforehand.

Mennas parents and brother were among at least 12 civilians killed by Israeli strikes during five days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad this month, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Israel says that nine civilians were killed in the strikes.

Six senior leaders of the armed group that Israel said had been responsible for rocket attacks on Israel were killed before a cease-fire was reached on May 13. The Israeli military said that Islamic Jihad had launched nearly 1,500 rockets indiscriminately toward Israel over the course of several days. Two people were killed in Israel, including an Israeli woman and a Palestinian worker from Gaza.

Members of the Khoswan family say they knew that an Islamic Jihad commander lived in the apartment below them and worried that he could be the target of an Israeli strike. Israel has designated Islamic Jihad as a terrorist organization as have countries including the United States and Japan and has regularly targeted its leaders and fighters.

Yet the Khoswans never thought their apartment would be hit while they were inside, Menna said, describing the shock of being awakened by the explosions ripping through her home.

The Israeli military said it had twice postponed the assassinations of the three Islamic Jihad commanders to ensure suitable operational conditions and minimize civilian casualties. But the military did not respond to questions about why it had targeted the three Islamic Jihad commanders on May 9 while they were at home or why it had launched the three bombs targeting the Islamic Jihad commander through the Khoswan home.

The Israeli military didnt choose to kill the dentist, said Nir Dinar, an Israeli army spokesman, declining to comment further.

The Israeli military released videos of the strikes it carried out, including one showing a man it accused of having fired rockets at Israel being struck in the middle of a road on a bicycle. Another showed a man walking in the courtyard of a complex of buildings for several seconds before entering a building. Once he went inside, the building was blown up.

The military said the videos showed how it had waited for targets to be alone before striking.

During the five days of fighting this month, Israeli strikes destroyed 103 homes, and more than 2,800 others were damaged, according to Gazas public works department.

Amnesty International has previously said that Israels pattern of attacks on residential homes in Gaza displayed a disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians and could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.

In the 11-day 2021 war between Hamas and Israel, Israel struck four tower buildings, destroying three of them; one had housed some of the worlds leading news media organizations, including The Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

The Israeli military said that it had destroyed the tower because the building also contained military assets belonging to Hamas, the political and armed group which controls and governs Gaza. The A.P. reported that at the time that the towers owner had been told he had an hour to make sure everyone has left the building.

Fearing that Israel would destroy entire buildings because they contained offices or homes belonging to members of armed groups, residents of some buildings posted signs in their lobbies warning against renting to departments linked to the Hamas-led government.

Israel has long accused Palestinian armed groups in Gaza of hiding among civilians and using them as human shields. Because the armed groups are homegrown, they live side by side among the people and their command centers are spread throughout Gaza.

Leaders and members of the groups say that Israels airstrikes are aimed at hurting the civilian population to undermine public support for them. The groups have wide support among Palestinians for their resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Since the 2021 war, Hamas says it has begun moving its offices away from important infrastructure such as hospitals and schools.

Khaled al-Batsh, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza, said his groups members lived in their own communities in the tiny enclave that is home to more than 2.3 million people.

Where should we go? Should we flee Palestine? Can we go set up a military base in Colorado? he said. They target the civilians so they can pit people against us.

South of Gaza City, Ghada Abu Ebeid, 50, this month was living with a relative near the remains of her familys two-story house, which was destroyed by an Israeli bomb in the recent fighting that also sheared off the fronts of nearby buildings.

An hour before the strike, the Israeli military warned residents up to 100 meters away to evacuate their homes, according to the Abu Ebeid family and neighbors.

When asked about the attack, the military referred to a statement saying that it had targeted Islamic Jihad command-and-control centers from which they operate and direct rockets toward Israel.

Ms. Ebeid would not say why she believed Israel had demolished their home. Neighbors said that one of her sons was a member of Islamic Jihad.

Many Gaza residents acknowledge that they do worry about who might move in next door, fearing that their neighbors could become targets. But they put the blame squarely on Israel.

What kind of precision is this when you kill civilians? said Asmahan Adas, referring to a strike on the home of her next-door neighbor, Khalil al-Bahtini, another Islamic Jihad commander, that also killed her two teenage daughters. When Israel wants to kill someone, they can find many different ways to kill, but they want others to die along with their target.

Ms. Adas said that when she knew Mr. Bahtini was at home, she would move her two daughters to the far side of their home, fearing that Israeli bombs could destroy the rooms closest to him.

On the night of May 9, she was unaware that Mr. Bahtini had returned home. Before she went to bed, Ms. Adas said good night to her two daughters, Iman, 17, and Dania, 19, who were sitting on their beds, watching cellphone videos and laughing, she said.

Minutes later, shortly after 2 a.m., three GBU-39 bombs pierced the roof of Mr. Bahtinis second-floor home, killing him, his wife and 5-year-old daughter. The blast also ripped through the bedroom of Ms. Adas teenager daughters, burying them in rubble.

A week later, Ms. Adas wept as she received mourners at her parents house. Dania was to be married on July 21. Now, her fianc visits her grave every day to talk to her.

I had dreams of taking my daughter out of our home in her wedding dress, not in a burial shroud, Ms. Adas said. They took everything from me in a second, just so they could kill one person.

Ameera Harouda contributed reporting.

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1. US calls Roger Waters performance in Berlin 'deeply offensive to Jewish people'  Reuters
2. US weighs in on Roger Waters antisemitism debate, says artist has long history of denigrating Jews  ABC News
3. US calls Roger Waters performance in Berlin 'deeply offensive to Jewish people' | Mint  Mint

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Holocaust survivors preserve Jewish history by writing in The Survivor Torah in New Orleans  WWLTV.com

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FIDF CEO Weil speaks to 350 at Green Road Synagogue Shabbaton  Cleveland Jewish News

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At 12, I was in Auschwitz. My parents and seven siblings were murdered. Here is how I built a life  The Guardian

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US weighs in on Roger Waters controversy, says artist has long track record of using antisemitic tropes  EL PAS USA

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Posted By admin on June 6, 2023

President Joe Biden released a national strategy to combat antisemitism touting commitments from organizations that have attacked Jewish groups while declining to mention a single Orthodox Jewish group and failing to unequivocally condemn attacks on Israel as antisemitic, just hours before religiously observant Jews had to unplug for a 48-hour festival.

It came out a few hours before Shavuos, one of the truly holy days in the Jewish calendar, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said of the presidents antisemitism strategy in an interview Tuesday with The Daily Signal. Youre not permitted to do anything except eat, sleep, and pray.

I think this made it more difficult for groups in Israel to respond immediately, and more difficult for people like me to act appropriately because I was preparing for the holy day, Klein said. I question whether this was intentional.

Agudath Israel, an Orthodox Jewish organization that praised Bidens strategy, noted that the timing limited the groups ability to analyze the document.

As we approach the Jewish holiday of Shavuos, there is little time to review in detail all the pillars of the strategy, and we will have to delay that analysis until after the festival, the organization said.

However, Agudath Israel said the strategy advanced its priorities, such as teaching the Holocaust, combating antisemitic discrimination and violence, and accommodating religious needs in federal programs.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the timing of the strategys release.

Klein also faulted Biden for failing to commit to one definition of antisemitism.

The strategy document notes several definitions of Jew-hatred, including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliances working definition, adopted in 2016, which the United States has embraced. Yet the document adds that the Biden administration welcomes and appreciates the Nexus Document and notes other such efforts.

Klein condemned Biden and Deborah Lipstadt, the State Departments special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism, for the definition.

I Morton Klein, as an American Jew, as a child of Holocaust survivors, have become frightened at the Biden-Lipstadt administration legitimizing antisemitism and Israel-bashing and making it extremely difficult for Jewish groups to fight [the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement] on campus as antisemitic and antisemitic members of Congress as antisemites, Klein said.

In an era of rising Jew-hatred and antisemitism and Israel bashing, to give legitimacy to certain antisemitic statements as not being antisemitic is endangering to American Jews, he added.

Klein and others support IHRAs definition of antisemitism because it includes certain attacks on Israel that single out the Jewish state for condemnation. Examples include:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

By contrast, the Nexus Document declares that as a general rule, criticism of Zionism and Israel, opposition to Israels policies, or nonviolent political action directed at the state of Israel and/or its policies should not, as such, be deemed antisemitic.

Many on the Left champion this definition, as it enables supporters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to claim that celebrating attacks on Israel doesnt constitute antisemitism.

The movement to boycott, divest, and sanction the state of Israel has inspired many antisemitic incidents on U.S. college campuses. Students for Justice in Palestine, with 206 chapters across the country, has organized lectures and rallies opposing Israel. A student at one such rally threw a rock at a group of Jewish students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in April 2022.

The Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents more than 2,000 Orthodox Jewish rabbis across the U.S., condemned Bidens antisemitism strategy for endorsing two contradictory definitions.

Economic warfare against the Jewish community has been a common expression of hatred literally for millennia; think of ghettos, prohibitions on Jews becoming craftsmen, and the Nazi boycott of 1933, the coalitions managing director, Rabbi Yaakov Menken, told The Daily Signal. The [Biden] strategy endorses two contradictory definitions of antisemitism, one of which pretends this increasingly common, frontline tactic isnt hateful when applied to Jews living in the Jewish homeland.

The White Houses fact sheet on the antisemitism strategy mentions the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but does not mention a single Orthodox Jewish group.

Agudath Israel told The Daily Signal that representatives of it and other Orthodox groups contributed to the strategy, including the Orthodox Union and American Friends of Lubavitch, but the White Houses fact sheet doesnt mention them. Nor does it mention the word Orthodox.

Menken with the Coalition for Jewish Values condemned the move.

SPLC not only fails to identify radical Islam as a source of antisemitic hatred, but targets allies of the Jewish community as hate groups,' Menken told The Daily Signal. CAIR, for its part, issued a report at the end of 2021 identifying mainstream Jewish charities as investors in anti-Muslim hate. So are they going to retract these false charges?

How are they expected to become partners fighting antisemitism after years of inciting it? Menken asked.

As I wrote in my book Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the SPLC long has squandered the reputation it built in suing the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy by branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations hate groups and placing them on a map with Klan chapters. The SPLC has condemned some Jewish leaders, such as David Horowitz, and Jewish organizations, such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, as anti-Muslim hate groups.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has echoed these claims, releasing reports demonizing those who fund SPLC-accused anti-Muslim hate groups. CAIR claims that it doesnt attack groups such as the committee on Middle East reporting because they are Jewish.

The Coalition for Jewish Values long has slammed CAIR, citing the fact that its founders previously worked at the Islamic Association for Palestine, or IAP, which the FBIs counterterrorism chief described as a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants.

The FBI listed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted of funneling millions to Hamas, which the State Department identifies as a terrorist group. CAIR received two $5,000 payments from the Holy Land Foundation.

CAIR has pushed back on these claims, noting that there is no legal implication to being labeled an unindicted co-conspirator, since it does not require the Justice Department to prove anything in a court of law. CAIR also has cited a 2010 case in which the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Justice Department violated the Fifth Amendment rights of groups such as CAIR by including them on the list of unindicted co-conspirators.

Menken has noted that CAIR organized a series of rallies calling for the release of Pakistani national Aafia Siddiqui from a U.S. prison, the cause that motivated Malik Faisal Akram to hold hostages in a Texas synagogue.

He also said that Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIRs San Francisco office, identified Zionist synagogues and polite Zionistsincluding the Anti-Defamation League as your enemies. CAIR has claimed Billoo was misquoted, but her remarks are clear.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations emphasized its history in condemning antisemitismincluding the Akram hostage incidentin remarks to The Daily Signal.

As our nations largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, we always have and, God willing, always will condemn anti-Semitic hate against our Jewish neighbors, regardless of the political, ideological, or religious identity of those responsible, CAIR Deputy Executive Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

Mitchell praised the White House for not unequivocally adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

At the same, we join other civil and human rights groups in strongly rejecting the false notion that advocating for Palestinian human rights is an act of bigotry, Mitchell said. We were pleased to learn that the strategy the White House privately developed with Jewish leaders and organizations does not conflate opposition to the Israeli governments human rights abuses with anti-Semitism.

We look forward to continuing to work with our Jewish neighbors to counter the hate arises far too often and threatens both of our communities, the CAIR official concluded.

Others also criticized the White House for touting CAIRs involvement in the strategy.

The Biden administration report to counter antisemitism falls short in a number of important ways. In addition to failing to adopt the IHRA definition that recognizes how anti-Israel activity can be a manifestation of Jew-hatred, the report buries the fight against antisemitism in a broader campaign against hate in general, Jay Greene, a senior research fellow in education at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal, which is Heritages news outlet.

Calling for the efforts to counter antisemitism to join forces with other organizations, like CAIR, who they claim to be partners in the campaign against hate, masks the extent to which many of these organizations are themselves major purveyors of Jew-hatred, Greene, who is Jewish, added. Unfortunately, Jews are not part of an intersectional alliance against all forms of hatred. Instead, Jews are too often the target of hatred from this supposed alliance against hate.

The report further masks the extent to which Jew-hatred is promoted by these progressive organizations, by exclusively citing examples of antisemitism that come from right-wing organizations, the Heritage scholar said. The result is an incomplete and distorted picture of antisemitism that pushes Jews to make alliances with their enemies.

The White House also released a roundup of praise from organizations across the political spectrum, which included the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel, but also the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC did not respond to The Daily Signals request for comment.

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Biden Touts CAIR, SPLC in Launching Antisemitism Strategy

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