How Obama misread the aims of Iran

By Neville Berman

In January 2009, the Democratic Party nominee, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States of America. It was a watershed moment in American history. America finally had a black President that seemed to fulfill the dreams of the Democratic Party and liberals.  The Norwegian Nobel Committee immediately bestowed on him the Nobel Peace Prize.

For his first foreign policy statement, Obama chose to speak at a university in Cairo. The choice of venue was a message in itself. Obama was greeted by rapturous applause by an overflowing audience of students. His speech revealed his positive view of Islam.

He started off by saying that he had come to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, and that they share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. He blamed the attacks of 9/11 on violent extremists who represented a small but potent minority of Muslims. He stated that “his father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims, but that he was a Christian, who as a boy had spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of Islam at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk.”

Below are some additional quotes from his speech that clearly demonstrated his thinking towards Islam:

• “Civilization’s debt to Islam that paved the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.”
• “Since America’s founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States.”
• “Let there be no doubt Islam is a part of America.” 
• “America is not and never will be at war with Islam.”
• “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”
•  “I will fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
• “Throughout history Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.”  
• “America and Iran must work together in mutual respect.”
• “I will seek a world in which no nation has nuclear weapons.” 
• “America would support human rights everywhere.”
• “Islam is a nation of tolerance.”
• “There is one rule that is common to all religions and that is we do unto others what we want to do to ourselves.” “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
• “The Holy Koran tells us to be conscious of God and speak always the truth.”

Obama’s views of Islam as a tolerant and peaceful religion must have come as news to hundreds of millions of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindus around the world. The claim made by Obama that Islam is a peaceful religion is contradicted by centuries of Islamic subjugation and oppression. Obama was obsessed with promoting peace and refused to see the reality of the fact that millions of Muslims around the world cheered on September 11, 2001 when 2,977 people were killed by al-Qaeda on American soil. The attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, makes a total mockery of

“Do unto others what we want to do to ourselves.”

The truth is that subjugation and domination are part of the pillars of Islam. Obama never mentioned the Islamist division of the world into Dar al-Islam and Dar al-harb. The former is the land where Muslims have sovereignty and where Shariah law is the law of the land. The latter refers to land that still needs to be conquered and subjugated to Shariah law. He also never mentioned the Islamic religious call for jihad against infidels.

Let us now turn our attention to Iran. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any attempt to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels is a violation of this treaty. By 2013, the UN Security Council had passed 6 resolutions that imposed various levels of sanctions against Iran for refusing to comply with demands to end its nuclear enrichment program. The resolutions included the freezing of Iranian exports of oil and gas. This drastically reduced Iran’s foreign income. Iran was also banned from using the Swift system that dominates international banking and money transfers. Billions of dollars of Iranian money were frozen in Western banks. The sanctions were crippling Iran’s economy. By 2013, the value of the Iranian Rial was in freefall and the Iranian people were out in the streets demanding changes. Despite all the calls of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”, Obama decided that it was time to negotiate a deal with Iran.  

In October 2013, representatives of the P5+1 (USA, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China) held talks with Iran in Geneva. The main aim of the American negotiating team was to ensure that Iran would never be able to acquire nuclear weapons, and in return, sanctions on Iran would then be lifted. To lead the American team of negotiators, Obama appointed Under Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, who had previously negotiated the deal with North Korea that was supposed to end its nuclear program.

It was a total failure.

An interim agreement with Iran was reached in November 2013. It partially removed some of the sanctions imposed by the United Nations and encouraged Iran to continue with the negotiations. Negotiations continued for  twenty months. In 2015, John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, took the lead in the negotiations. For 18 days in Vienna, he worked with the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javid Zarif, to finalize the deal. The final deal between Iran and the P5+1 delegates, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was officially reached on July 14, 2015. It was subsequently adopted on October 18, 2015.

The JCPOA deal achieved the exact opposite of what was originally intended. The sunset clause in the deal simply kicked the can down the road for when Iran could legally acquire nuclear weapons once the deal ends in October 2030. No restrictions or inspections were placed on Iran’s missile program. Iran was allowed to enrich uranium up to 3.67% without any limit as to the amount it could produce at this level. It was also agreed that if Iran enriched uranium above the agreed level, it needed to either destroy the uranium enriched beyond 3.67% level, or send it to another country for safekeeping. In effect the deal allows Iran to acquire the knowledge of how to enrich uranium to weapons grade level, and to then send it to another country for safekeeping. Russia would be the most likely country to receive the enriched uranium. The absurdity of Russia protecting the West by safekeeping weapons grade uranium produced by Iran was what was effectively agreed to. In addition, the deal allows Iran to produce unlimited intercontinental missiles that could threaten the world. After October 2030, these missiles could be legally armed with nuclear warheads.

Iran agreed that inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could take place at certain sites.  Surprise inspections required 48 hours’ notice. The agreement included a clause that if Iran did not abide by the agreement, Iran could be referred back to the Security Council to reimpose sanctions on Iran. This so-called “snapback sanctions” clause could be exercised at any time during the first 10 years of the agreement. China and Russia would not be permitted to vote if Iran was referred back to the Security Council to reimpose sanctions for non-compliance.  

Under the deal, sanctions on Iran were immediately lifted. Iran was given permission to export oil and gas and companies were given permission to invest in the Iranian oil and gas industry. Iran was allowed to rejoin the Swift Banking system. If this was not catastrophic enough, the deal immediately released frozen Iranian money plus interest on the money. Reports vary as to the actual amount released, but all agree that the sum was in the tens of billions of dollars. One report estimated that the final amount released was approximately $100 billion.  Obama ordered part of the money to be transferred in cash. The obvious intention of providing cash was to prevent American banking oversight of what the money would be used for. Iran immediately received all the benefits, while America received commitments by Iran to comply with the agreement in the future. It turned out that Iran had no intention to keep to its commitments.

In plain language, Iran lied.

Obama realized that the deal would never be approved by the Senate if it was presented as a treaty. What actually happened was that the negotiators signed the cover page of the agreement in Vienna, and then the parties to the deal, announced that they had agreed to it. There was no ceremony where the deal was signed. Obama was determined to bypass all the rules of approval needed in a treaty. What this meant was that any future American President could withdraw from the agreement. The Iranians were laughing all the way to the bank.    

With the windfall of money that Iran received, it immediately increased funding to its proxy terrorist organizations around the world, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran continued to claim that its nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes.  This was clearly a blatant lie. There is no peaceful use for uranium that is enriched to weapons grade levels. Its only use is to manufacture nuclear weapons. Iran also denied access to certain sites by the IAEA inspectors.  Questions raised by the inspectors were either ignored or non-plausible answers were provided. The inspections would eventually become an absolute farce. In the final analysis, Obama did nothing to rid the world of nuclear weapons. What he did was to sanctify that the world’s leading terrorist state would legally be allowed to have a nuclear arsenal of unlimited magnitude once the sunset date was reached.

On May 8, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the JCPOA agreement. He called the agreement “a horrible one -sided deal that should have never, ever been made. ” He added that the deal would never bring peace.   

The present war in Iran can be traced back to President’s Obama’s naïve assumption that once Iran was treated with respect, it would become part of liberal based international order, and would live in peace with the world. Without any doubt, the JCPOA deal helped Iran out of a crisis, and empowered the Shiite mullahs of Iran to spread terrorism around the world. The deal provided Iran with frozen money as well as billions of dollars of future profits derived from the sale of Iranian oil on the world market. The money made it possible for Iran to finance its missile program, its nuclear program and to greatly increase funding to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The money transformed Iran into a threat to world peace.

Obama either misunderstood the Islamic goal of subjugating the world, or he had some ulterior motive to conclude a deal with Iran.  Whatever the case, Obama set in motion the events that led to the present war with Iran. Obama undoubtedly made the world into a much more dangerous place. The long arm of President Obama’s legacy is the present war with Iran.

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

A mass murder of Jews on a public beach did not “just happen” –  When lies reign, death ultimately follows.

By  Allan Joffe

Two months on from the Bondi attacks, a hard truth remains: antisemitism is nourished when untruths about Israel go unchallenged. Much of this misinformation spreads easily because many who consider themselves neutral remain uninformed out of complacency or the belief that the issue is simply too complex to engage with. Others fall into false moral equivalence that blurs the line between atrocity and response.

The level of misunderstanding is often astonishing. Joe Rogan recently guessed that there are “500 million Jews in the world.”

The real number is 15 million. 

In this environment, where algorithms deliver information designed to provoke rather than clarify, ignorance – to paraphrase Joseph Goebbels – is what allows a lie repeated often enough to become accepted as truth. In this sea of disinformation, some facts remain beyond dispute. These are not matters of interpretation or ideology, but facts that anyone engaging in this debate should understand. 

FACT 1: denying the Jewish connection to Zionism is antisemitic. 

For most Jews, Zionism is an expression of identity and faith. The Jewish people have long understood themselves as a nation with an enduring historical, cultural, and spiritual connection to the land of Israel. Nationally, Israel is to many Jews what Armenia is to Armenians or Greece to Greeks. Religiously, the longing for Zion is woven into Jewish prayers, holidays, and scripture much as Mecca anchors Islam and Rome anchors Catholicism. 

To insist that Judaism be defined without Zionism is an attempt to dictate to Jews how they understand their own faith and identity. No-one claims the right to redefine any other religion or identity in this way. 

Zionism is simply the belief that the Jewish people, like any other nation, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. To deny that right uniquely to Jews isn’t progressive. It’s prejudice. 

FACT 2: 7 October wasn’t resistance. It was terrorism. 

Hamas terrorists carried printed orders explicitly instructing them to kill as many people as possible and to target schools and civilian communities. They raped women, burned families alive, and executed children. These weren’t acts of desperation or liberation, but war crimes. Those who justify or “contextualise” such crimes reveal moral bankruptcy. 

FACT 3: Israel didn’t occupy Gaza 

In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew completely from Gaza in the hope that the territory would become a peaceful, self-governed Palestinian entity. It was a real opportunity for Palestinian self-rule, however Hamas used it to wage war on Israel. 

To limit the flow of weapons, Israel and Egypt jointly controlled Gaza’s borders – a policy often misrepresented as a “blockade”. The massacres of 7 October proved how ineffective that measure was. The claim that Gaza was “occupied” isn’t a legal or factual reality. 

FACT 4: the conflict isn’t about borders, it’s about Israel’s existence 

If the Palestinian cause was really about ending the “occupation” and achieving statehood, it would have been resolved decades ago. Palestinian leaders were offered independence repeatedly – in 1937; 1947; 1967; 2000; and 2008 – and rejected each proposal. 

At Camp David in 2000, under then United States President Bill Clinton, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairperson Yasser Arafat was offered a state comprising most of the West Bank and all of Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Arafat walked away, and the Second Intifada followed. In 2008, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a similar offer. 

The record is clear: the conflict has never been about the size of Israel. It is rooted in an ideological refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state in any borders. 

FACT 5: Hamas isn’t a resistance movement 

Hamas’s founding charter calls for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews. Its leaders openly promise to repeat massacres like that of 7/10.”

This isn’t a movement of resistance, but a jihadist regime whose worldview is fundamentally opposed to liberal democratic values. Hamas enforces Sharia law; suppresses dissent; persecutes LGBTQ+ people; and strips women of basic rights. 

This ideology isn’t confined to Hamas. Repeated polls show broad public support for Hamas and for the 7 October atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority continues its “pay-for-slay” policy, paying salaries to the families of terrorists, with higher payments for killing more Jews. Schools are named after “martyrs” who murdered Israeli civilians, and children are taught to idolise them. This isn’t a fringe phenomenon but an institutionalised worldview that is taught, celebrated, and rewarded. 

Author and philosopher Sam Harris captured the core asymmetry of the conflict, saying, “If the Palestinians laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down theirs, there would be genocide.” Israel is fighting a jihadist ideology that openly calls for genocide. 

FACT 6: the Palestinian refugee system keeps Palestinians stateless by design 

After World War II, refugee crises involving millions were resolved through resettlement. Twelve million Germans expelled from Eastern Europe; 14 million Hindus and Muslims displaced by the India-Pakistan partition; and three million Koreans separated by the Korean War were all resettled and rebuilt their lives. 

The Palestinian case is unique. In 1948, roughly 750 000 Palestinians became refugees and a comparable number of Jews were expelled from Arab states. Yet today, the number of Palestinian “refugees” exceeds five million, while the number of Jewish refugees is zero. This is because the United Nations via UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) applies a unique system used for no other refugee population: Palestinian refugee status is inherited indefinitely, even by those who hold full citizenship elsewhere. And unlike every other post-war refugee crisis, not one Palestinian refugee has ever been resettled under UNRWA’s mandate. Each generation is kept stateless by design. 

The absurdity is obvious. Omar Yaghi, the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, was born in Jordan to Palestinian parents and left for the United States at age 15. Today, he holds American, Jordanian, and Saudi citizenship. Under UNRWA’s rules, he could still be classified as a Palestinian “refugee” if he had been registered with UNRWA before he emigrated and if so, his children could also inherit that status. 

This is an institutional system designed to keep the refugee issue alive indefinitely. It ensures that it is never resolved, and it leads directly to the next fallacy: the so-called “right of return”. 

FACT 7: the “right of return” is a demographic weapon 

The so-called “right of return” – the demand that more than five million Palestinians and their descendants be allowed to resettle inside Israel isn’t a humanitarian proposal but a demographic weapon. 

No other refugee population makes such a demand. The descendants of Germans expelled after World War II or of Hindus and Muslims displaced in 1947 don’t claim a “right” to return to homes their ancestors left generations ago. This demand exists only in the Palestinian case because it serves a political goal: to undo Israel’s existence through demographic means. 

If implemented, Israel would be transformed into a Palestinian majority entity. A solution that includes a “right of return” isn’t a peace plan. It’s a political impossibility. 

FACT 8: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East 

According to the 2023 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, Israel ranked 30th in the world, between the United States and Portugal. Australia ranked 14th; and South Africa, one of Israel’s harshest critics, 47th. The Palestinian Territories – ranked 115th – and every Middle Eastern state were classified as authoritarian. 

Israel stands as the region’s only democracy, with free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, and a free, critical press. 

Fact 9: the UN applies double standards to Israel 

No country has faced more condemnation by the UN than Israel – a level of scrutiny that reflects an institutional fixation while the UN has very little to say about countries such as Venezuela, Sudan, North Korea, and Iran. From 2015 to 2023, the General Assembly passed 154 resolutions censuring Israel, and only 71 against all other nations combined. At the Human Rights Council, Agenda Item 7 exists solely to debate Israel’s alleged violations, while no other state faces comparable treatment. 

This bias extends to the officials leading these supposedly neutral bodies. Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, has had her positions on Israel condemned by France,Germany, and the US as “disgraceful”, “scandalous”, and “antisemitic”, yet remained in her post. The UN’s “independent” inquiry into Israel is chaired by Navi Pillay, who took the position after publicly branding Israel an apartheid state. 

These patterns reveal a culture within the UN and its agencies that legitimises Israel’s detractors and fuels modern antisemitism. 

Fact 10: Israel is falsely portrayed as a settler-colonial state 

Israel and Zionism aren’t colonial projects. Jewish presence in the land stretches back thousands of years, and as academic Dr. Einat Wilf notes, one need not be Jewish or religious to recognise that few relationships between a people and a land are as deep and enduring. 

The return of Jews to their homeland bears no resemblance to colonialism in which a foreign power conquers territory to extract resources. From humble beginnings, Israel has built one of the world’s most open and diverse societies and has the 18th-highest GDP (gross domestic product) per capita in the world, between Belgium and Germany. 

The descendants of the Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries after 1948 now comprise more than half of Israel’s Jewish population, meaning that the majority of Jewish Israelis are from the Middle East and not from Europe. 

Israel also has more than two million Arab citizens who enjoy full and equal legal rights. Arab representatives serve in the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) and on the Supreme Court. The Arab population has grown from 156 000 in 1948 to more than two million today. This demographic reality is incompatible with claims of colonialism or apartheid. 

BEFORE YOU DECIDE WHAT THE TRUTH IS

The debate about Israel is, at its core, a debate about moral clarity. The loudest anti-Israel movements draw on a familiar convergence of ideas. Some of their leading figures openly support jihadist violence, presenting it as resistance. Others on the far left reframe the conflict through distorted theories of settler-colonialism and race. And on the far right, there are those who promote antisemitic conspiracies, minimise the Holocaust, or revive old-fashioned Jew-hatred. 

Before you decide where you stand, ask yourself whether these voices reflect your values. 

Bondi starkly demonstrated the cost of indulging such narratives. 

In the war for truth, ignorance isn’t neutrality. It’s a choice. 

*Feature picture: Bondi Beach Massacre. Left behind was more than people’s personal belongings but the end of a nation’s innocence.

About the writer:

A Chartered Accountant by training, Allan Joffe is a businessman based in Johannesburg. He is husband to Sandi, and father of their three children. 

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

The upside-down world that we now live in.

By Neville Berman

It is estimated that over 1,600 ethnic groups and indigenous peoples in the world lack sovereignty over the land on which they live. Included in the list in alphabetical order are the Aboriginal people in Australia, the Balochis in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Basques in Spain and France, the Catalonians in Spain, the Crimean Tatars in Russia, the Inuit in Greenland, the Kurds in Syria and Turkey, the Red Indians in America, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Roma in Europe, the Sikhs in India, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Tibetans in Tibet, the Uyghurs in China, and the Yazidis in Iraq, Syria and Armenia.

However, there is one group of people called the Palestinians that are a complete exception to every other group of people that do not have sovereignty. Since 1937, they have rejected 6 offers of a Palestinian State living next to Israel in peace and security. Despite these refusals, 157 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations currently support the creation of a Palestinian State. The irony is that almost none of the countries in the world are interested in granting statehood to any of the other ethnic groups, such as those mentioned above.

There are over 100 million refugees in the world all living with help from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The mandate of this agency is to assist refugees and to facilitate their resettlement in a third country. Palestinian refugees have a separate UN agency that deals exclusively with them. It is the United Nations Relief Works Agency known as UNRWA. It has an annual budget that exceeds a billion dollars. Its mandate is not to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, but to perpetuate it. Even the definition of Palestinian refugees is different to that of all other refugees. Other refugees have to prove that they were forced to leave in order to gain refugee status. In contrast Palestinian refugees are defined as Palestinians who left Israel as a result of wars in 1948 or in 1967. All descendants of Palestinian refugees, no matter when or where they are born, are considered Palestinian refugees in perpetuity. No other refugees in the world have the same rights as Palestinian refugees. Clearly, the Palestinians are the world’s most exceptional refugees. 

The Palestinians have no oil. They have no rare earth commodities that the world needs. They have zero intellectual property. They have no currency of their own. There is absolutely nothing that the Palestinians manufacture that the world needs or cannot do without. They have no language or customs that are unique to them. They have not had elections since 2005. They rule by force of arms. They claim perpetual victimhood and rely on billions of dollars of aid to sustain their economy. They deny the holocaust, and falsely claim that the Jews have no history in Israel. Another remarkable fact about the Palestinians is the enormous wealth of their leadership. They are all either multi-millionaires or billionaires while claiming to be victims of Israeli occupation. The Palestinians are simply quite extraordinary.

After the Second World War ended, the principles of what became the foundation of international law came into existence. It was based on the following scenario. The defeated country agreed to unconditional surrender. Their leaders were then charged with committing crimes against humanity. Those found guilty were executed, or sent to prison for decades or for life. Reconstruction of the defeated country then commenced. 

In the case of Gaza, it seems that the accepted scenario has been inverted. Hamas has not surrendered. No living leaders of Hamas have been charged with committing any crimes.  Despite this, President Trump has called for a 20 point plan for the reconstruction of Gaza. The plan calls for an estimated $100 billion to rebuild Gaza and turn it into a tourist attraction. The competition for tourists, conventions and sporting competitions in the Middle East is already fierce. Millions of tourists are presently flocking to the superb tourist attractions in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt. They are incredibly interesting places to visit and have top class hotels, facilities and amenities catering to tourists. In addition, Saudi Arabia is building a massive new tourist complex along the Red Sea. It is part of its Vision 2030 program. Realistically speaking, Gaza is unlikely to become a major tourist destination. The competition is just too overwhelming. The amount requested to rebuild Gaza is more than the today’s equivalent of the cost of the entire Marshall Plan that helped 16 Western European countries including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy to rebuild and modernize after the Second World War. Trump’s plan to rebuild Gaza is a hugely expensive project. It is a recipe for corruption and failure on a massive scale.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. They killed over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, in unimaginable savage circumstances and took over 250 living and dead hostages back to Gaza. They killed babies. They raped women. They killed whole families and beheaded people. They burnt people to death and destroyed whatever they could. They proudly filmed themselves committing the most horrendous crimes and boasted about what they had done. Hamas broke every accepted code of civilized behavior, and ruled themselves out as ever being potential peace partners. They have never expressed any remorse about what happened. These are the people that the world now wants to reward by granting them statehood.  

One day after the attack on October 7, 2003, the Secretary General of the United Nations called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Three days later he accused Israel of starving the people of Gaza. Despite all the atrocities committed by Hamas, the UN has not issued a single resolution condemning Hamas. In May 2024, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) charged 4 individuals with committing crimes against humanity.  The four individuals are the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the ex-Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, and 2 Hamas leaders, namely Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif. The linking of the horrendous crimes committed by Hamas and Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself is a disgrace to the very concept of international law. To add insult to injury, both of the Hamas leaders charged by the ICC are dead, and none of the billionaire leaders of Hamas living in luxury in Qatar have been charged. They are fully complicit in the crimes committed by Hamas, yet they have been given total amnesty by the ICC.  This is a real Ripley’s “believe it or not” situation.  

Existing words were simply inadequate to describe what happened in the Holocaust. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer coined a new word to describe the unprecedented horrors of what had befallen the Jews of Europe. The word was “genocide”. To now accuse Israel of committing genocide is the ultimate insult to the memory of all those millions of Jews who were exterminated in the holocaust. If one wants to know what genocide is, all one has to do is read the Hamas Charter. It calls for the killing of every Jew and the elimination of Israel.

The Christian world is obsessed with preventing the Jews from reclaiming the Jewish ancestral biblical homeland. This is not actually that surprising when one considers that for over two thousand years, the majority of Christians have been led to believe that Christianity has replaced Judaism, that God has forsaken the Jews, and that Jews are a wandering people without a country. The events of 1948 and 1967 have clearly shown that God has kept his promise to the Jews.  

It is time for the world to come to its senses and accept reality. It is time for the world to recognize that appeasing and rewarding terrorism leads to greater terrorism in the future. It is time to discard the outdated and failed policies of the past. It is time to accept the fact that Jews have a long history of living in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. It is time to accept that centuries before the beginning of Christianity, Jews built the First and Second Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It is time to accept that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the State of Israel and that Israel will always be the homeland of the Jewish people. Israel has become a technological powerhouse of ingenuity and intellectual property. It is changing not only the Middle East, but the entire world for the better. It’s time to stop trying to delegitimize and demonize Israel. Instead, it is time to support Israel.

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Rabbi Leo Dee’s experience and counsel on how to honour personal tragedy without being imprisoned by it.

By Jonathan Feldstein

In April 2023, Rabbi Leo Dee’s life shattered in an instant. While driving with his family for vacation on the second day of Passover, his wife Lucy and two daughters, Maia and Rina, were murdered in a Hamas terrorist ambush. Leo, driving ahead in another car, survived along with three other children who were with him. What followed was not only profound personal grief, but the challenge of being a traumatized husband and father, suddenly raising his grieving children alone. Yet, in almost three years since, Leo Dee has emerged as a remarkable voice of resilience, faith, and purposeful healing, most notably through his book “The Seven Facets of Healing.”

In a recent conversation on “Inspiration from Zion,” Leo shared his journey and personal story of transformation. Originally a successful private equity professional in London, driven by a sense of calling in his London community, he left the world of finance and he and Lucy made aliyah to Israel in 2004. The tragedy of 2023 could have broken him, but instead it revealed strengths forged over a lifetime, especially throughout his 25-year marriage, that taught him empathy and perseverance.

Central to Leo’s message is the idea that tragedy marks a clear breakpoint. Thirty days after the attack, as the formal Jewish mourning period ended, he gathered his surviving children and declared: “We are entering a new world.” This was not denial but deliberate reframing. Drawing on the Jewish morning prayer that God “renews creation every day,” he taught his family—and now teaches others—that every moment offers the possibility of a new beginning. Rather than live in the shadow of loss, one must consciously step forward into a future that honors the past without being imprisoned by it.

This mindset echoes the innovative framework Lucy herself created early in their marriage. Frustrated with date nights derailed by complaints, she devised “The Seven Facets for Living” to ground even challenging times: Friends, Family, Fitness, Fun, Finances, Firm (work/function), and Faith. By requiring discussion of all seven, Leo and Lucy gained perspective that difficulties in one area were offset by blessings in others. After the tragedy, Leo realized these same categories became the primary pillars for heal. Friends evoked memories of social gatherings with Lucy; family highlighted absent voices; even leisure activities stirred pain. Thus, Lucy’s “Seven Facets for Living” became the foundation for Leo’s “Seven Facets of Healing.”

His book, structured around these categories, offers practical wisdom born of hard experience. Leo discovered that post-trauma instincts are often exactly wrong. Hollywood portrays bereavement as endless tears and withdrawal; in reality, those behaviors prolong suffering. He shares how, in the first year, he instinctively avoided smiling in photos with visitors, believing it would dishonor his lost loved ones. Only later did he recall positive-psychology research: smiling actually generates happiness through serotonin release. He also understood that despite his loss, Lucy would not want him to be unhappy, nor would he wish that for her should he have been in the wrong car that horrible day. It was not smiling, not being happy, was what would dishonor Lucy’s memory. Forcing smiles again, allowing himself to be happy, was counter to his instinct at the time, but helped lift his mood and create a model of resilience for his children.

Perhaps the deepest insight and foundation of healing concerns faith. Leo publicly affirmed God’s greatness daily through leading prayers and reciting Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, despite every reason to feel anger. He realized this public declaration served three purposes:

• elevating the souls of the deceased
• strengthening the mourner
• and, most powerfully, demonstrating to the community that faith can endure unimaginable tragedy.

When well-meaning people asked “What if?” questions (“What if you had left later?” “What if you never moved to Israel?”), Leo eventually forbade such speculation as futile. While these were all questions he asked himself, Leo instead poses one permitted “What if?”: What if this was always God’s plan? Accepting that reality shifts focus from regret to response: given these cards, how will I play them?

Leo extends these lessons beyond personal grief to national trauma. Six months after the murder of Lucy, Maia and Rina, the October 7 Hamas attack and massacre brought collective Israeli suffering. He sees parallels: just as individuals must reframe life after tragedy, a nation must find new purpose. He credits Israel’s resilience to an underlying faith — even among the secular — that manifest as trust in the people, the land, and the biblical promise. On October 8, when government and army structures faltered, ordinary citizens instinctively asked, “Where do they need me?” and filled every gap—supplying soldiers, housing evacuees, feeding frontline troops.

This question — “Where do they need me?” — had been Leo’s guiding mantra. It once drove him from a lucrative career in finance into the rabbinate.  Now it fuels his speaking worldwide. He urges Jews to build Israel and Christians to transform the rest of the world with biblical values. Having recently addressed evangelical churches in Canada, he expresses profound gratitude for Christian Zionists who, he believes, remain the West’s last strong defenders of Judeo-Christian morality.

For those currently in pain, Leo offers two immediate consolations. First: your loved ones in heaven want only your happiness; prolonged misery dishonors their memory and harms surviving family. Second: the present is illusory — only past and future exist. We can choose to warehouse pain in the past (visiting it on memorial days) while living fully in an open future.

Leo Dee’s story is not one of superhuman invulnerability but of deliberate, faith-guided choices. He grieves deeply yet refuses to let grief define the remainder of his life — or that of his children. Through ‘The Seven Facets of Healing’, he extends Lucy’s legacy, turning private wisdom into public light. In an age of widespread trauma — personal and collective — his voice reminds us that healing is possible, purpose is renewable, and every new day truly is a beginning God offers afresh.

*You can follow the full inspirational conversation with Leo Dee on “Inspiration from Zion” on YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).