BLACK LIVES MATTER (BLM) – REALLY?

Israel exposes global hypocrisy by showing in deed how facts dismantle slogans.

By Grant Gochin

I write as an African diplomat who has paid the price of principle not merely in money, but in repeated arrests, interrogations, and forced escape. Arrested three times in South Africa for anti-Apartheid activism—detained, questioned under threat, and ultimately fleeing to survive—I have lived the raw consequences of demanding Black dignity, rather than performing it for cameras and clicks. For decades, I have volunteered across the African continent: teaching literacy in remote villages, building community infrastructure, and serving for the past seventeen years as Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. I was appointed Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs of the African Union, representing 1.25 billion Black Africans to 350 million Americans, and invested as Chief of the Village of Babade for my lifelong philanthropic work. I act in the trenches while others posture on stages. Europe preens and lectures. The record is crystal clear, unyielding, and demands confrontation.

**Out of Africa – literally**. In Operation Moses, Israel, in a series of dramatic and daring airlifts (1984-1985), rescued 8,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community from refugee camps in Sudan and brought them to the Jewish state. It was the first time in world history that large numbers of native Black Africans were taken from that continent, not in chains to be enslaved, but to begin new lives in the State of Israel.

Israel stands alone in recorded history as the only nation to airlift Black Africans en masse to safety and grant them full citizenship. Through Operation Moses in 1984 and Operation Solomon in 1991, Israeli forces evacuated over 30,000 Ethiopian Jews from the jaws of famine, civil war, and Sudanese death camps. Hercules aircraft flew daring secret night missions into hostile territory, risking everything, while the world churned out empty statements and resolutions. No hashtags. No boycotts. Just airlifts, resettlement, and genuine integration. Today, Ethiopian-Israelis lead IDF combat units, hold seats in the Knesset, and serve on Israel’s Supreme Court. No other country—not the African Union, not the European Union, not the United States, not the Arab League — has ever undertaken such a feat. Israel has rescued Black lives in crisis after crisis:

– 1976 Entebbe Raid, storming Uganda to liberate hostages including Africans;

– 2007 airlifts of Darfuri refugees escaping genocide

– Multiple medical missions,

– Drip-irrigation technology exports

– Ebola treatment clinics in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.

**Saving Black African Lives**. With Ethiopia in the midst of civil war, Israel in 1991 airlifted in Operation Solomon over 14,000 Ethiopian Jews in a covert rescue operation to Israel in 36 hours.

Israel delivers more per-capita humanitarian aid to Africa than any of those European virtue-signalers thundering from their podiums. Facts dismantle slogans every time.

President Isaac Herzog’s historic state visit to Zambia —the first ever by an Israeli leader — laid bare the grotesque hypocrisy. At President Hakainde Hichilema’s state dinner in Lusaka, Herzog declared:

“We are worried and disturbed by the terrible disasters taking place in other parts of Africa… We hope the international community will focus on the pain in Africa at least as much as it has focused with its obsession on the State of Israel.”

He spoke with diplomatic restraint. I will not.

**Heartwarming**. African doctors train in Israel to bring life-saving pediatric care back home. Since 1995, hundreds of medical professionals from Africa have trained through **Save A Child’s Heart** helping thousands of children in places where pediatric cardiac care is limited.

Europe — led by the shrill chorus of Ireland, Spain, and their enablers — reserves its megaphones exclusively for Israel. Sudan’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of millions: crickets. Congo’s child slaves mining cobalt for European electric cars: silence. Somalia’s famines and piracy: indifference. But Israel’s response to Gaza’s rocket barrages from Hamas? Deafening shrieks of outrage. This is not solidarity with the oppressed; it is opportunistic antisemitism cloaked in compassion’s rags. Palestinian propaganda shields African genocide, as I documented here: Palestinian Propaganda Shields African Atrocities. The mechanics of this playbook appear in Hamas’s information strategy, dissected here: Hamas’s Propaganda Playbook.

**Enriching Relationships**. On a state visit to Africa in August 2023, Israeli president, Isaac Herzog (2^nd left) is seen here with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema (3^rd left) flanked by a Zambian student studying in Israel and Gigawatt Global CEO Josef Abramowitz. (Photo: Lynn Schler)

INVERTED HISTORY

Why this laser-focused obsession? Holocaust inversion — the Europeans’ desperate psychological sleight-of-hand to expiate their own unhealed guilt. Unable to confront their orchestration of the murder of six million Jews, they flip the narrative:

– Jews morph into Nazis

– Palestinians into the new Jews

– Israel into the Third Reich

Guilt washed away in a torrent of inverted history. Scholar Lesley Klaff exposes this in Holocaust Inversion and Contemporary Antisemitism (2014): the “Zionism = Nazism” trope is a laundering mechanism that reverses victim and perpetrator, allowing Europe to bargain with its shame. Ireland’s leaders blasphemously equate Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto, ignoring their own nation’s complicity in welcoming Nazi war criminals post-1945. Spain, an eager Holocaust collaborator under Franco, hauls Israel before the ICJ while the echoes of its 1492 Jewish expulsion edict still reverberate through history. This is not human-rights advocacy; it is the Holocaust continued in a new form — verbal, legal, and cultural extermination by proxy.

The inventions pile higher:

“Apartheid” in Israel — an utter fabrication by creative propagandists. Arab Israelis vote, serve in parliament, sit on the Supreme Court, command military units, and own businesses freely. Apartheid? I lived under real Apartheid. Israel is the antithesis. Israel is the most successful de-colonization project in human history — a reclaimed ancestral homeland, not a colonial implant. There was no enforced starvation in Gaza; food, medicine, and fuel flowed in even as Hamas diverted supplies to build terror tunnels and rockets.

Genocide? A fictional accusation in a hate campaign built on lies. Those who repeated these slanders — politicians, academics, protesters — can never again be considered intelligent or credible. They are suckers to disinformation, not independent thinkers. They swallowed Hamas press releases whole, proving how easily manipulated minds can be weaponized.

I accuse these shrill European attention-seekers of utter stupidity, brazen fact-inversion, and cowardly virtue-signaling. I have paid the real cost: three South African arrests, interrogations, Togolese village hardships, Lithuanian killing fields where my own family was annihilated. They have paid nothing but the price of press-conference soundbites and social-media likes.

The fraud extends to the media mouthpieces. The BBC became a willing conduit for Hamas disinformation, parroting unverified casualty figures and staging narratives without scrutiny much like Al Jazeera, which operates as an arm of Qatari-funded propaganda. The UN employed, trained, and shielded Hamas operatives in UNRWA, defending them even as evidence of terror ties mounted. Those who swallowed this concerted worldwide propaganda campaign were utter fools, deceived by an obvious fraud. They willingly consumed the lies, revealing how easily manipulated they are. The self-proclaimed “warriors” for justice on U.S. campuses were no such thing — they were chumps, played like pawns in a game they never understood.

**Jewish Lives Don’t Matter**. Only two weeks after the October 7 massacre of Jews in Israel, these demonstrators on 22 October 2023 in Columbus, Ohio display a poster that reads “Isreal [sic] are the new Nazis”. Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany occur frequently in current political discourse on Israel amounting to the new antisemitism.

Israel, meanwhile, reopens its embassy in Lusaka as a hub of practical innovation — agriculture, health, education — fueling Africa’s true rebirth. Zion and Africa are bound by shared endurance and resilience, not Europe’s inherited, unrepented shame.

Africans, recognize your allies in action, not words. Jews, honor your historical rescuers. Europeans, sit in silence until you can speak without trafficking in the Holocaust.

Black lives have never mattered to Europe.
They matter profoundly to Israel.
That is the unassailable record.
It is historical fact.
It is not negotiable rhetoric.

About the writer:

Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/

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).

FROM PLONSK TO A NATION

Tracing Ben Gurion’s roots from small town in central Poland to forging a nation.

By Motti Verses

This coming October 16 will mark another birthday of a leader whose wisdom we could certainly use in today’s roller-coaster reality. Born back in the 19^th century in 1886, he is sadly no longer with us. While most people, myself included, tend to honor his memory by visiting his grave in Sde Boker, this time I decided to pay tribute in a different way: by tracing David Ben Gurion’s roots in Poland.

On our way back from Gdańsk to Warsaw Chopin Airport, we turned off the highway to a small, easily overlooked town: Płońsk, 70k/ms north of Warsaw. Israel’s founding prime minister was born here, and I was determined to find the house where he first saw the light of day. Thanks to modern technology, the task was surprisingly easy. Without it, it would have been nearly impossible, as there are no road signs directing visitors there.

It was a moving visit. The oval-shaped old town plaza is tiny, ringed with homes of bygone eras. Among them stood a turquoise-colored building that, according to images on my phone, matched the one I was seeking. Once a restaurant, now closed, it bears a “For Rent” sign in the window. Perhaps this is a golden opportunity for a Jewish investor to acquire the property and give it a purpose worthy of its history. A modest black plaque announces that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, was born here.

**Food for Thought**. From the outside, a visitor would know that this small turquoise building had once been a restaurant but could be excused for not knowing that long before had been the childhood home of one of the most iconic nation-builders of the 20^th century – David Ben Gurion.(Photo: Motti Verses)

Back then, he was still David Grün, growing up in a modest Jewish household. At the time, Płońsk was part of the Russian Empire (today, Poland) and had a vibrant Jewish community that made up roughly half its population. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a teacher and an active member of the Ḥovevei Zion (“Lovers of Zion”) movement, which inspired young David with the ideals of Jewish national revival.

As a teenager, Ben-Gurion joined Poale Zion, a socialist-Zionist youth group, and even began teaching Hebrew to local children. Life in Płońsk’s close-knit shtetl, shared with both Jews and Poles, shaped his worldview: he saw the necessity of Jewish self-reliance while also recognizing the challenges of coexistence. In 1906, at the age of 19, he emigrated to Eretz Israel and the rest, as they say, is history.

**Płońsk to Palestine**. David Ben-Gurion (bottom center) in white shirt at a gathering of “Poalei Tzion” (Jewish worker youth movement) in Płońsk before his emigration to Eretz Israel/Palestine in 1906 still under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. In the back row, right of the flag, stands his father, Avigdor Grün. (Photo: Ben-Gurion Archives)

Today, Płońsk commemorates him with various educational initiatives. The Płońsk Memorial House (Dom Pamięci w Płońsku) tells the story of his youth and of the once-thriving Jewish community. Located just across the narrow street from the turquoise house, it is dedicated to the intertwined history of Polish and Jewish residents who lived together in Płońsk for nearly five centuries. The museum is housed in a restored early 20th-century two-story brick building that once served as both a pharmacy and a residence. The project reflects a broader goal: to preserve the shared memory of both communities, foster intercultural dialogue, and honor the legacy for visiting descendants of Płońsk’s Jews as well as tourists interested in the town’s history and its connection to David Ben-Gurion.

**Sign of the Times**. A modest black plaque informs that Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion was born in this house.(Photo: Motti Verses)

What struck me most was a remarkable mural on one of the nearby building walls. This vibrant graffiti artwork tells the story of Israel and Ben-Gurion. It was created by the multifaceted Polish artist Bruno Neuhamer (also known as Bruno Althamer), a draftsman, illustrator, sculptor, and street artist. The mural was unveiled on October 26, 2021, during the Jewish Culture Festival in Płońsk. The project was realized in cooperation with the city authorities, the local cultural center, and the Israeli Embassy in Poland.

**Mural of Memories**. Located on a wall of a tenement house at 6 Warszawska Street in Płońsk, Bruno Neuhamer’s mural tells the story of Israel and the life of Ben-Gurion, including the legendary image of the Prime Minister standing on his head which he did from childhood in Płońsk to old age in Israel, including on Tel Aviv beach. (Photo: Motti Verses)

The central image shows Ben-Gurion balancing on his head, inspired by a 1957 photograph by Paul Goldman, preserved at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. According to historical accounts, young Ben-Gurion often fainted, and his doctor prescribed headstands as a remedy. A habit he maintained well into later life. Beyond the literal image, the pose – as I saw it – carries a deeper metaphor: to achieve something great, one sometimes must turn the world upside down.

**“HISTORY IS NOT WRITEN, HISTORY IS MADE”**. This is the last line in the Murial’s inscription on the life of Ben Gurion that appears in Polish, English and Hebrew. (Photo: Motti Verses)

In Ben-Gurion’s case, this is the story of a boy from Płońsk who did just that, ultimately founding a nation. The mural is filled with details: exotic plants, tanks with raised barrels, adding layers of meaning. At first, the tanks seemed out of place, yet in today’s reality, Neuhamer’s choice feels prophetic. The mural left me thoughtful, even melancholic, about Israel’s present and image in the world.

**Early Life**. One of the exhibits relating to David Ben Gurion in the Płońsk Memorial House. (Photo: Motti Verses)

As an Israeli visiting Płońsk, I felt a mix of emotions. Walking the same streets that young David once knew was like touching the roots of modern Israel’s story. It was a reminder that a boy from here turned the world upside down to create a nation. There was a strong echo of resilience, dreams, and lives stretching from Poland to Israel, along with sadness for the absence of the once-vibrant Jewish community, erased by the Holocaust. The silence where synagogues, schools, and children’s laughter once filled the air was palpable. And yet, there was also warmth: many Polish young people today take pride in commemorating their town’s connection to Israel. Płońsk still holds a living link to the Jewish people. An encouraging reality in our times.

**Past Preserved**. Across the street from Ben Gurion’s childhood home is the entrance to Płońsk Memorial House. (Photo: Motti Verses)

It was pleasantly cool in Płońsk this August. In winter, average temperatures here hover around 0 °C (32°F). My thoughts drifted to young David’s reality, and to the stark contrast of his later life in the Middle East-especially during the sweltering hot days of the Negev desert in Sde Boker. Quite a change, and quite a challenge.

You don’t need more than an hour to see Płońsk; everything is small and close together. But if you’re in the area, make the stop – it will certainly be worth it.

It will also be both enlightening and rewarding to see how from this small town emerged a giant of the 20^th century that defied insurmountable obstacles and challenges to forge a nation on their ancestral land that today hosts the largest core Jewish population in the world, with 7.2 million, followed by the United States with 6.3 million.

The man who did headstands knew where and when to stand where and when it mattered!

*Feature picture: Birth of a Nation. The writer stands in front of Ben-Gurion’s childhood home in Płońsk, Poland. (Photo: Motti Verses)

About the writer:

The writer, Motti Verses, is a Travel Flash Tips publisher. His travel stories are published on THE TIMES OF ISRAEL https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/motti-verses/. And his hospitality analysis reviews on THE JERUSALEM POST, are available on his Linkedin page LinkedIn Israelhttps://il.linkedin.com › motti-verse…Motti Verses – Publisher and Chief Editor – TRAVEL FLASH TIPSAnd his hospitality analysis reviews on THE JERUSALEM POST, are available on his Linkedin page LinkedIn Israelhttps://il.linkedin.com › motti-verse…Motti Verses – Publisher and Chief Editor – TRAVEL FLASH TIPS.

POETS’ CORNER

What began as a war on Israel on October 7, 2023 has spread to a war on Jews everywhere. There are few safe havens for Jews anymore or anywhere. With people submitting in poetry for publication their thoughts that encompass their concerns, hopes and their joy, Lay of the Land is making the space for such expression.

David E. Kaplan, Lay of the Land Editor.

YOU CALL ME A ZIONIST

By Tim Flack

You call me Zionist
as though the word were a curse,
as though it burns like shame upon the tongue.
But I wear it as a crown.
It is the echo of prophets,
the dream of exiles,
the oath whispered by rivers of blood:
Next year in Jerusalem.

You call me Jew
as though it were a slur,
as though history had not proven
that every empire which spat that word
is dust beneath our feet.

Jew means covenant,
it means we outlasted Pharaoh, Rome, Babylon,
it means we walked through fire and sang still.

You call me Zionist
and I do not shrink.
It means my grandparents’ bones rest easy
because their children came home.
It means the desert blooms where they tried to salt the earth.
It means we write Hebrew on the wind again,
unbroken, unafraid.

Call me Zionist,
and hear in that word the thunder of Masada,
the prayers of Vilna, the rifles of ’48,
the voices that refused to be silenced in Auschwitz
and rose again in Tel Aviv.
I am Jew.
I am Zionist.
Not your insult, but my anthem.
Not your dagger, but my sword.
Not your shame, but my glory.
You call me Zionist.
Yes.
And I answer:
Am Yisrael Chai.

A DANCE OF HOPE

By Fonda Dubb

A dance of hope is all I want
To spread my wings and travel to other places, other lands, where people live with different smells, different colours and different faces.
How I would love to fly above the sky and look down at other places
I would dance to the heartbeat of a drum, and dance as my heart beats over other lands
To explore the universe

And spread my wings
To love all other places
To comfort those that grieve in other places
And breathe the air of other places
To give out love and charity
And embrace all those that live in other places
To be united and have no pain
With all who live in other places
As I float above the sky
Looking down at other places
And bring peace and love to all I see
To say Amen for God’s creation of other places and dance lovingly to tunes of love of other lands and other places.
I pray for all of us living in this fruitful land which brings us light and love.
Mankind has to show and feel the beauty of a single word
HUMANITY
The biggest secret of it all
That’s what teaches us to live with pride in this precious land, that God created for us all
To show respect and love for one another
Let us pray together
in unison
For a better us
To live together in peace, harmony and love
So we can all share God’s Gifts together in this Holy Land
Where our only wish is for us to dance A DANCE OF HOPE together in a deep and troubled land.

About the poets:

Tim Flack, Cape Town, South Africa.
Fonda Dubb, Beth Protea, Herzliya, Israel.

LETTER TO ‘LAY OF THE LAND’ READERS

By Derek Arnolds

From the Editor:
In his last week’s article in Lay of the Land ‘Insights from the Inside’, recently retired senior intelligence analyst in the South African Secret Service, Derek Arnolds, posited that:
“Hamas’s propaganda war has fundamentally shaped South Africa’s policy vis-à-vis Israel.”
The article solicited plenty feedback, both praise and criticism, so much so that Arnolds felt inspired to respond, which appears hereunder.
David E. Kaplan Editor.

Dear readers,

On August 11^th, 2025, I penned an article in Lay of the Land, “Succumbing to Hamas’ propaganda, South Africa’s government is part of an immoral minority on the wrong side of history”, wherein I provided a critical commentary, based on evidential foundations, about the African National Congress and the South African government for its position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, without calumny. Specifically, I posited that strained bilateral relations require recalibration despite the ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case. The article aimed to spark a conversation with a diverse audience, even those who might have found its contents unpalatable. While some have welcomed the article as incisive, others have found it overly critical and biased. I welcome a contrarian perspective lest I be accused of being a grumpy writer. As always, I am amenable to constructive criticism as we find meaning in differences. This is the essence of the Socratic method of reasoning. I am inspired by the works of great authors like Khalil Gibran and Martin Buber on humility and building enduring interrelationships despite differences. After rereading Buber’s seminal book, “I and Thou” (1923), I do believe human beings should seek to build relationships based on mutual recognition and dialogue.

Martin Buber’s work of *I and Thou* has had a profound and lasting impact on modern thinking including Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, but maybe found too few readers among South Africa’s current leadership.

Critical debate and dialogue are essential in solving South Africa’s myriad societal problems, not only in the foreign policy domain. South Africans are alarmed at the country’s negative economic growth trajectory and the impact of the United States’ stinging tariffs. South Africa has matured into a durable democracy and remains Africa’s last great hope. South Africa is not an Orwellian society; hence, South Africans of all persuasions have the right to criticise its government’s foreign policy as it is representative of the whole. While foreign policy formulation remains the purview of the South African presidency, it must take into account domestic and external considerations. Foreign policy, like ‘strategy’ and ‘grand strategy’, is a blueprint for a country’s engagement with the external environment. Therefore, it must be adaptable in the face of radical uncertainty, disruptive and emerging technologies and the weaponisation of artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, misperceptions about South Africa’s foreign relations with other countries do exist. Criticism of South Africa’s foreign policy does not constitute disloyalty in the same way as support for the Palestinian cause does not amount to extremism. In a related vein, not all Israelis support their right-wing government’s policies in Gaza. At the time of writing, thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to demand an end to the war in the Strip and the release of all hostages. Even Israel’s military leaders have misgivings about a prolonged presence in Gaza. Although Israel’s security cabinet has set specific conditions for a ceasefire, including a post-war governance structure sans Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA – the entity that governs the West Bank), I do believe it is misguided to exclude the PA since it is an international legal entity that emerged out of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement (1994) and the Oslo Accords. Despite its dysfunctionality, the PA – supported by Israel, the international community and key regional players – should be revitalised to take over governance of Gaza. This debate is already taking place in the Arab world. Although angst permeates the Israeli and Palestinian national psyche due to the war, no one can object that the Palestinians deserve a state of their own. For this to materialise, direct talks between the two sides are necessary, and mutual trust – broken due to decades of wars – needs to be rebuilt. In essence, this is what peace-loving South Africans want. South Africa can play a crucial part in future peace initiatives in the form of outreach programs and best practices from our reconciliation project. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Friends of Israel are part of outreach programs with other faith-based organisations. The article was written in that spirit.

Yours sincerely

Derek Arnolds

About the writer:
Derek Arnolds is a freelance writer and analyst. Opinions expressed in this letter are my own and do not reflect those of my past employers.

FROM ASHES TO DEFIANCE

Why I love Israel

By Andrew Fox

This week, I stood before living history.

More accurately, men and women whose very existence defies history. Holocaust survivors, some over a century old, who had endured the worst of what humanity can inflict. Ghettos, gas chambers, forced marches; the industrial murder of their people. I was honoured to speak to individuals who rebuilt their lives from ash and silence.

I am not Jewish (I am Roman Catholic). Still, as the grandson of a Second World War 8^th US Army veteran, I carry a deep sense of reverence and responsibility toward that history. This week, as I stood before those survivors to speak about Gaza, about the disinformation war, and Israel, I was not offering sympathy. In some ways, I felt as if I was bearing witness, but most importantly, I was pledging solidarity.

Their questions were sharp, dignified, and profoundly unsettling. More than one survivor remarked, with clarity and calm, almost in passing, that the atmosphere in Britain today reminds them of Germany in the 1930s. They did not mean the gas chambers, of course; but the permissiveness, the slander, and the strange quiet of broader society. The sudden social permission to despise Jews once more. In that moment, I understood more clearly than ever why I love Israel as a country.

I have visited Israel numerous times. I have walked the streets of Jerusalem, explored the borders of the Golan, and met soldiers, teachers, Israeli Arabs, and Druze. However, nothing could prepare me for what I witnessed visiting the sites of 7^th October.

I walked through the ruins of Be’eri and Kfar Aza. I stood in safe rooms blackened by fire, rooms that had become tombs. I saw bloodied mattresses, burnt toys, and walls riddled with bullets. I listened to survivors recount what was done to women, to children and the elderly for the crime of being Jewish. It was not war. It was slaughter. It was an act of ethnic hatred so deliberate, so barbaric, that one cannot look at it and walk away unchanged.

Now, just twenty months later and every month since that horror, activists, academics, influencers, and politicians accuse Israel of committing a “holocaust” in Gaza. They call it a genocide and equate the defensive war of a sovereign state with the systematic extermination of six million Jews. There is a word for this:

Obscenity

The war in Gaza is brutal and tragic. It has been poorly managed in parts, undermined by internal Israeli politics and fluctuating pressure from the Biden administration. Civilian suffering is undeniable.

However, the war was initiated by Hamas:

It was Hamas that shattered a ceasefire and unleashed carnage on 7th October.
It is Hamas that embeds itself among civilians.
It is Hamas that evades all responsibility for the catastrophe it has created – yet it is Israel and Jews more broadly who are held entirely to account.

This is not just morally wrong. It is morally depraved. The word “genocide” has been weaponised not to protect life, but to smear the one country in the world that exists to prevent another genocide of the Jewish people.

If Israel’s military campaign in Gaza were a genocide, Gaza would no longer exist. Israel has the power to flatten it entirely. It has not. It has taken costly, often dangerous steps to mitigate civilian harm, even as Hamas exploits that caution. Thanks to a stunningly successful information warfare campaign by Hamas and their Qatari allies, the chants grow louder, the lies grow bolder, and the mobs grow angrier.

Now, in almost parodic apotheosis of this moral vacuity, we see Iranian flags being waved in the heart of London. Just today, demonstrators in Parliament Square carried the banner of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. A regime that funds Hamas, armed Hezbollah, trained the Houthis, and openly vows to wipe Israel off the map. They carried that flag through the streets of Britain, possibly from ignorance (if we are being generous), but mostly in defiance due to their hatred of Israel for daring to defend itself. In their twisted minds, this outweighs any concern for the fact that they are cheering on a theocratic terror state and an enemy of this country. It is not activism; it is allegiance to evil.

Protesters in Parliament Square on 14 June called for the Israeli attack on Iran to stop (Credit: Guy Smallman/Getty).

This war, which has been fought on seven fronts, is not merely between Israel and Hamas. It is Iran’s war. Hamas pulled the trigger, but Iran constructed the weapon. Iran provided the ammunition, Iran gave the fire control order, and Iran hopes the world’s moral confusion will result in targets falling when hit.

Not today. Israel has finally, and rightly, stopped waiting for the West to catch up. It is taking the fight to Iran to ensure its survival. This is not an escalation. It is a necessary action to prevent a genuine second Holocaust.

This dynamism and action are what make Israel different. This is why I love the place. Not because it is perfect (because it is not—balagan!), but because it is necessary. It serves as the firewall between Jewish existence and annihilation. It does not wait for pity; it acts, endures, and fights back.

However, as those Holocaust survivors this week proved to me, British Jews, along with Jewish communities throughout the diaspora, do not have the same sense of security. They are few, and once again, they are made to feel like outsiders in the countries they consider home.

In Britain, synagogues and Jewish events require tight security. A Jewish business risks being vandalised for existing. A Jewish student on campus is shouted down, deplatformed, or worse, simply for expressing pride in the only Jewish state. Israel may not need our sympathy, but British Jews need our solidarity.

If the memory of the Holocaust means anything, it must mean this: that Jews should never have to walk alone, ever again. When Holocaust survivors, the last living witnesses to humanity’s darkest abyss, tell us that the atmosphere in Britain today reminds them of 1930s Germany, they are not speculating. They are remembering. That is not a warning to be debated; it is one to be heeded.

The only question remaining is whether their neighbours; you, me, all of us; will stand with them now, while it still matters. I implore you to do so.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

REFLECTIONS IN SUNNY EILAT

A week’s holiday in Israel’s southern seaside resort during war presents some illuminating thoughts beyond sea and sun.

By David E. Kaplan

Before setting off to the beach I stepped into two bookstores. It presented the first clue signifying a fundamental change from visiting Eilat in years gone by when there were always robust English sections and prominently displaced – no more! Such as there were, were now tucked away; one had to look for it and when found, they displayed few recently published books in English, mainly the old classics – good to read but also having read. So, I saw Melville’s Moby Dick and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – as if obligatory presentations – but no sight of a latest Follett or Baldacci bestseller. Afterall, it was the beach I was heading to, not an English lit tutorial! While hot outside at a sweltering 36 degrees, there was little hot on the bookshelves – in English. The reason was soon obvious; why stock a merchandise if there are no customers and clearly, there are no foreign English-speaking tourists from abroad coming to Eilat.

It was soon evident there were no foreign tourist coming from anywhere!

**Turquoise and Tranquil**. View from the writer’s hotel balcony overlooking the Red Sea with Jordan and Saudi Arabia to the left and Egypt on the right. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

This observation was all too evident walking along the long beautifully renovated beach tayelet (promenade) splicing a path between the long line of majestic hotels on one side and the emerald green merging into turquoise of the Red Sea on the other. It was packed – day and night – and to walk it was like threading a needle but there was another conspicuous difference from the not-too-distant past. Whereas previously Hebrew was a ‘foreign language’ on the promenade as one walked past conversations in French, English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and German. Today, the lingua franca is emphatically Hebrew as the tourists here in their multitude were all local Israelis.

With enemy ballistic missiles from Yemen directed mostly at central Israel, the concern here may not be existential but it is certainly financial. Being a resort city dependent on foreign tourism, Eilat is being hard hit by the war and is a microcosm of the situation vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish world. Foreign tourists seeking sea and sun have stopped coming to Eilat and Israelis – feeling increasingly isolated by rampant antisemitism abroad and few airlines flying to Israel because of the Houthi missiles aimed at Ben Gurion Airport – flock to Eilat.

**Splendid and Serene**. Four countries that were once at war but no more as seen from Israel’s Eilat beach with Egypt on the righ and Jordan and Saudi Arabia on the left. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

Actually, the bookstores should not have been the first clue of this now presently flawed gem!

Frequent visitors to Eilat over the years will recall when the airport was in the center of town and the planes would approach the runway from the sea, skimming over the roofs of the hotels, it used to be a fun pastime while lying on the beach – particularly with kids – to count the incoming planes and to identify the airline from the logos – that’s how close they flew in to land. I recall times when they used to come in at intervals of 5 minutes, with planes flying directly to Eilat from cities across Europe and Russia. Now the new airport – Ramon International – is approximately 20 kilometers north of Eilat and as my wife and I drove past heading to Eilat, we saw not ONE plane fly in, nor could we see any planes parked. There was not a plane in sight, either in the air or the ground.

It didn’t register as significant then until hours later we processed on the promenade – No Foreign Tourists!

**Desert Dreams**. As seen from Eilat, a close-up of the lettering of Marsa Zayed boldly embedded into the Jordanian mountain. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

Lying on a deckchair under palm trees at the beach in front of the hotel was sheer joy. Far removed visually and atmospherically from war, my eyes scanned from left to right, taking in the ochre-colored mountains of Jordan, followed in the distance by Saudi Arabia and then across the Red Sea dotted by moving and at varying speeds, yachts, power boats and jet skis – Egypt. All so pleasantly peaceful. Dreams and visions for the future were all to visually evident. On the Israeli side, new residential building was sprouting out the desert scaling the mountain side, while to the left on the mountain of Jordan above the port of Aqaba, was a huge sign embedded into the mountain. The writing was so big that one did not require binoculus sitting in Eilat to read the two words – Marsa Zayed. “What did it mean?” I wondered and was puzzled why it was spelt so boldly in English and not in Arabic. Curiosity got the better of me, so I Googled and leant that Marsa means “harbor” or “anchorage” and that Mara Zayed is a $10 billion redevelopment project named after sheikh Zayed Bin Saltan Al Nahyan, an Emerati royal politician, philanthropist and founder of the United Arab Emirates and served as its first president from its independence on 2 December 1971.

**Aqaba Awakening**. An artist’s impression of Aqaba’s $10 billion Marsa Zayed development project that will comprise a marina, high-rise, hotels as well as retail, residential, entertainment and financial districts. The white tower in the center is clearly visible from the beaches in Eilat.

The project will consist of a marina, high-rise, hotels, retail, residential, entertainment and financial districts. This is Jordans only coastline and is only 16 miles (26 Km) long, the country with the fourth shortest in the world but nevertheless plans to make the most of it. Size does not matter – one has only to look at Monaca with the world’s shortest coastal frontage – a mere 2.5 miles of Mediterranean coastline but boasts home to over 12,000 millionaires.

**Jubilant Jordanians**. At the Marsa Zayed project initiation ceremony in Aqaba which will transform a 320-hectare section of Red Sea beachfront into a tourism and business hub. The name MARSA ZAYED can be seen in the center halfway up the mountain.

No shortage of coastline is Egypt with its Red Sea Riviera immensely popular for its year-round warm weather, its white sand beaches and world-renowned diving.

I reflected on the name of Eilat’s tayelet called the “Peace Promenade” and the plan for it to eventually run from Taba in Egypt’s Sinai through to Aqaba in Jordan. Both countries are contractually at peace with Israel if not with any great public enthusiasm or support, but the vision and the potential is there, particularly if Saudi Arabia , which I could clearly make out to the south, joins in a post-Gaza war, the Abrahams Accord.

**Music and Musings**. A staple of Eilat’s nightlife, the popular ‘Three Monkeys’ on the promenade offers live music nightly and has been attracting a diverse and dynamic crowd since its creation. Usually filled with foreign tourists, at present because of the war, mostly Israelis.

Trade and tourism not tumult I thought as I doused myself with more sunscreen lotion. The only danger today was the sun’s rays and I hoped on my next visit to Eilat, the bookstores will again be replete with English books!

Feature picture: Eilat’s coastal frontage of beaches and hotels with the city center to the left.

BRIDGE THE GULF

The Persian Gulf – Past, Present and Future

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

Recently there have been rumors of President Trump changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the “Arabian Gulf”, causing great concern and even anger among millions of Iranians. At the same time, there are ongoing reports about the US making a deal with the evil Iranian Islamic regime, concerning Israelis, Iranians, and Americans alike. As Trump visits the Middle East and will overfly the body of water separating Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, it is important to look at what this means today, historically, and the long-term implications for the future.

While I applaud any effort to undermine, weaken, and eliminate the Islamic regime which should be a US priority, the idea of renaming the Persian Gulf and negotiating with the ayatollahs are contradictory, and in the end strengthen the regime.

**A Gulf Apart**. Ahead of his trip to the Middle East, President Trump floated changing the name of the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Gulf, infuriating Iran and its people. The body of water has been called the Persian Gulf since at least 550 B.C.

The Persian Gulf is a body of water that separates Persia (Iran) from the hub of the Arab world. Indeed, changing the name of the Persian Gulf will be a slap in the face to the Islamic Republic, but one they will use to rally support against the US, with renewed chants of “Death to America”, and perpetuate suffering of the Iranian people.

It will cause anger among average Iranians, as it is one of the few physical reminders in the world of the name Persia, and its rich culture which they yearn to restore, free from the atrocities of the Islamic Republic which most Iranians reject. The term Persian connects Iranians with their national identity beginning with King Cyrus, the first king of the Persian Empire, considered the father of the Iranian people, from the sixth century BCE.

Iranians also know that Arabs have tried many times to destroy Persian culture and its heritage, starting in the seventh century when Arabs conquered Persia. Persia was forced into the Islamic world, and Islam was forced on the Persian people. The rise of Islam in Persia and forced conversion of Persians still feels like a foreign ideology where Islam was not indigenous. Throughout history, Persians – today Iranians – fought to restore their culture and national inheritance.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution was another invasion of Iran by extremist Muslims like Ayatollah Khomeini and others, whose origin and ideology were not Persian, but Arab. Iran has been occupied and ruled by evil ayatollahs whose intention is to erase Persian history, purging Iranians’ identity and culture, while forcing them to extremist Islam. They initiated a system of hate and brainwashing to build walls around their own brutal illegitimate rule. There is no religious freedom, and anyone who converts to any other religion would face prison, torture, and even execution.

Miraculously, I was spared death by hanging because of my faith. Millions of others have not been so lucky.

Further purging Persian culture and history, Iranians are forbidden to visit the tombs of Biblical giants such as King Cyrus, Daniel, Esther, and Mordecai, among other pillars of Persian history.

**Intimidated by History**. For at least a decade, authorities have restricted access to Cyrus’s tomb at Pasargadae, deploying security forces to prevent large gatherings due to concerns that these might escalate into anti-state protests. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the state has increasingly suppressed celebrations of pre-Islamic heritage, viewing them as potential threats to the Islamic state’s authority.

There’s been an awaking among young Iranians who understand that Islam is the root of their problem, and the ayatollahs are their true enemies; that Iran has been occupied by Islamic extremists with no respect for Persian culture and history.

King Cyrus is a great example to many. He did not bring peace and stability by undermining the history of other nations. Instead, he helped Persians, and other great nations like the Jewish people, rebuild their history and culture. He facilitated the return of the Jewish people to the Land of their fathers after 70 years of exile, rebuilding the Temple, and restoring their ancient prosperity.

King Cyrus is also recognized for his achievements in human rights, politics, and military strategy. The Cyrus Cylinder is the world’s first charter of human rights, providing the basis for the first four articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and translated into all six official languages of the United Nations.

**Ancient ‘Bill of Rights’**. When the Cyrus Cylinder, which dates from the 6th century BC was loaned by the British Museum on a ‘traveling exhibition” to the USA in 2013, Museum director Neil MacGregor declared that “the cylinder, often referred to “as the first bill of human rights”- must be shared as widely as possible.”

Iranians have compared President Trump to King Cyrus. I have always supported and admired President Trump and his great leadership. I hope he is not deceived by malicious advice of the Islamic regime’s agents who have infiltrated America. I pray he does not try to build his own legacy by undermining the proud identity of millions of Iranians.

**Suppression of Women**. Photos taken in western Tehran capture the presence of black clad women and armed men confronting women who did not wear a headscarf.

As an ordinary woman who lived under the tyranny of the evil Ayatollahs for 33 years and experienced many brutalities and misogyny under the harsh rules of Islam, I have never stopped warning my fellow Americans about the Islamic regime and its intentions and tactics to destroy America from within. Through NewPersia.org I educate Americans about Islam, and the Iranian people about their true history, and the importance of restoring our historic friendship with the Jewish people.

**Angered Iranians**. Women have been at the forefront of protests in Iran. (Photo: Hawar News Agency via AP)

President Trump can truly be the next Cyrus to help Iranians who have suffered under the ayatollahs, to restore their freedom and national honor. We must embolden the people, not erase pillars of their national pride by changing the name of the Persian Gulf.

And certainly not by negotiating with the evil Islamic Republic.

About the writer:

Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org.

LESSONS FROM MY FRIEND’S EXECUTION IN IRAN’S EVIN PRISON

Nearly executed like her cellmate affords understanding of the depravity and dangers of the Teheran regime.

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

This year, more than ever, it’s impossible not to think about the execution of my best friend, Shirin Alamhooli on May 9, 2010. I met Shirin in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison where I had been arrested and sentenced to death by hanging because of converting to Christianity, a “crime” the Islamic regime calls “apostasy” and which carries a death penalty. I was arrested in March 2009. Shirin had already been in prison for some time as a political Kurdish prisoner.

**Iranian Injustice**. This photo of Shirin Alamhooli was taken by the writer while in Evin Prisonm Teheran. Shiran was executed on May 9, 2010. (Photo: Marziyeh Amirizadeh)

As a Christian, I had many people advocating for my freedom from the first day, and miraculously, I was released that November, and then came to America where I have become a proud citizen. Unfortunately, neither the world nor the terrorist Islamic regime cared about the life of a 28-year-old Kurdish woman. Shirin spent months being brutally tortured: repeatedly kicked in her stomach, bashing her head against the wall until she passed out, hanging her from the ceiling for hours on end, and beating her with a cable. They would only stop the torture for the Islamic prayer, to dedicate their savage acts to Allah. To satisfy him.

For months Shirin could not walk because the skin was torn from the bottom of her feet during the torture. Most of the time we would sit together and from a small window looked at the mountains beyond the walls of prison. She would sing a beautiful Kurdish song. She wished just to walk to the mountains freely, to fly away like a bird one more time.

**At The Mercy Of Evil Men**. Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner and former aid worker, faces the confirmation of her death sentence by the Iranian Supreme Court.

We ate and talked together almost daily. She asked me to promise her that if I got released and she didn’t, to never stop fighting against the evil Islamic regime.

From the first day of my release, I started fighting for her release, even though I remained in mortal danger myself. I will never forget that horrific day I got a call from one of my cellmates still in prison:

“Marzi, Shirin was executed.”

…. then uncontrollable crying.

I felt like I died. I hung up the phone, and for a few hours I felt as if all my internal organs had frozen. My whole body froze. I could not move, talk, or think.

Along with my roommate, Maryam, with whom I had also been arrested and sentenced to death and then released, we went outside the prison with Shirin’s brother, pleading just to get her body to bury her with dignity. The prison authorities lied. They told us her body had been sent to the cemetery. We rushed there and they said they never received Shirin’s body. We returned to Evin Prison, begging them to give us her body. They refused, mocking us. Today, nobody knows her burial place, if she even has one.

Even 15 years later, Shirin’s execution is one of the most painful things in my life. Growing up in the Islamic Republic, there were many. This year we must take a lesson from her murder, as the Islamic regime remains the greatest threat to the US, and the world. I am pained that those leaders in my adopted country, which I love and am so grateful for, are being deceived by the notion that the ayatollahs can be rationalized with, that negotiation is anything more than a fool’s errand.

Indeed, the Iranian Islamic Republic cannot be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon – ever, under any circumstances. Negotiation will only give them time to bury their centrifuge deeper, and to hide the enriched uranium that has no civilian purpose. To be clear: if the Islamic Republic is able to acquire a nuclear weapon, they will use it. They will threaten the US and Israel, the “Great Satan,” and the “Little Satan.” They will establish a nuclear umbrella that will let them blackmail and terrorize the rest of the world. There is no doubt about this, yet too many in the West don’t realize it.

While all this is horrible, and is threatening, and cause enough to do everything possible to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, no less horrible is the cancerous threat of spreading of their evil, extremist Islamic ideology: in the US and the rest of the world. A nuclear bomb can kill millions instantaneously, but their dangerous ideology infects the whole world, spreading like a virus, and destroying and threatening millions from within over decades.

**Condemned to Die**. For 46 years, the gallows of the Islamic Republic have claimed countless women’s lives.

My friend Shirin is evidence of that. Arrested, tortured, and executed, she was one of millions of Iranians alone who are victims of this extremist ideology. While no level of torture is out of bounds in the Islamic Republic, according to their strict following of Islamic laws, it’s not allowed to execute a virgin. It is a known practice for women like Shirin, and others, that before being executed they are brutally raped, taking the level of obscenity beyond imagination. That’s another example of why negotiations are futile, and they can never be trusted.

I was supposed to be one of its victims too. Outside Iran, through its terrorist proxies around the world including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Syrian Assad regime, Kataib Hezbollah, and more, millions of others have been killed and maimed. Vast “no-go” neighborhoods of major European cities have become dangerous cesspools of Islamic hate.

The US and the world must be saved from this threat. But there’s another reason as well. For more than 46 years, 85 million Iranians have been held captive, hostage to the ayatollahs -victims of their lies. They have been repeatedly let down by the West looking to make a deal. The worst of these examples was President Obama who, while I was in prison, not only abandoned the Iranian people during the Green Movement, but sent billions of dollars to Iran, thinking that he could pay off the ayatollahs. Still today, Iranians consider Obama as having betrayed them.

**Revelations from the Inside**. In *Captive in Iran*, two courageous Iranian women – the writer and a former cellmate on death row in Evin Prison who made it out alive – recount their experiences in one of the world’s darkest places.

There have been reports of Islamic Republic, today, offering the US billions in contracts to rebuild Iran, but that is nothing more than extortion. In fact, the US can achieve unlimited potential and billions in contracts rebuilding Iran by doing everything possible to bring down the Islamic regime, making Iran and Iranians free, and eliminating the world’s greatest source of terror and war.

This is what needs to be done. While it cannot bring back Shirin, it will at least fulfill her wishes for a free Iran, and those of so many others who have suffered their brutality.

*Feature picture: Shirin Alam Holi, born in 1981 in a small village near Maku, executed in Evin Prison on May 9th 2010 after passing one year and nine months in prison. She was charged for cooperating with Pajak (Iranian branch of PKK) on Nov. 29th 2009 and sentenced to death. (Photos: Marziyeh Amirizadeh)

About the writer:

Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com. Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org

HEARTWARMING INSIGHTS INTO JEWISH PHILANTHROPY

A review of Solly Kaplinski’s evocative “Journeys into the Gentle Heart’ revealing the WHY of the WHO.

by David E. Kaplan

Travelling the length and breadth of Israel, you cannot fail to notice when visiting parks and forests, hospitals, water reservoirs, restored antiquities, universities and colleges, museums, kindergartens, special needs schools and other enriching medical, scientific or cultural institutions – the illuminating boards with the names of donors. These boards are an insight into the DNA of a special global Jewish community – a community of individuals who, having succeeded in their personal lives in the lands they live, then want to contribute to the success of the land of their collective dream – the eternal Jewish homeland of Israel.

Alongside the family names on these donor boards invariably appear the cities they hail from. Typically, you’ll see Sydney or Melbourne, Cape Town or Johannesburg, Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, LA, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia or New York or multiple cities across Europe and the UK to name but a few. Short in wording, these donor boards are long in their message. It tells a story of a collective venture – and for many of them an “adventure” – of like-minded visionaries and of shared family values that transcends global geography, embraces Jewish history and ensures Jewish continuity.

**Helping Hand**. Over 20 years of working with philanthropists, Solly Kaplinski reaches out to donor families from Jewish communities around the world to learn what inspires or even “ignites” their passion to support causes in their home countries and Israel.

While earlier generations of philanthropists, notably the Rothschild and Montefiore families, contributed during the pioneering period to the creation and establishment of the Jewish state, the baton passed to ensuing generations who continued the legacy contributing to strengthening the state so that in the words of Israel’s illustrious diplomat, Abba Eban, “Israel’s future will be longer than its past.”

So, while we gaze at the donor boards and recognise many of the family names, what is less known is the ‘WHY’.

This is the question that fascinated Solly Kaplinski, who has spent much of his working life professionally engaging with “givers”. The result of his enquiry is his latest book ‘JOURNEYS INTO THE GENTLE HEART – The World Is Built With Kindness’, where Solly engages with 50 donor families, “who I know personally and with whom I worked – in some cases over a 20-year period. ”Most of the material “was solicited via a combination of interviews, drafts submitted and finessed, and zoom calls.” It makes fascinating reading and particularly instructive to those engaged in the multifaceted world of fundraising.

Solly has all the attributes to explore the world of Jewish philanthropy. An engaging personality, author, poet and the son of Holocaust survivors – his parents survived the Shoah as a member of the Bielski partisans in the forests of Poland – Solly, before settling in Israel with his family 25 years ago, headed Jewish Day Schools first in Cape Town in his native South Africa and later in Canada. In Israel, he went on to serve as Yad Vashem’s Director of the English Desk and thereafter served as the JDC’s Executive Director of Overseas Joint Ventures. These experiences gave Solly an amplified insight into the global world of Jewish philanthropy and to understand the mindset of donors.

**Kaplinski’s ‘Journeys into the Gentle Heart’** enables readers to accompany 50 storytellers from all over the world sharing their personal journeys, delving into what fuels their philanthropy. (Graphic design is by Leora Blum of Ra’anana)

An added dimension to his book is that it was written over a period of traumatic transition in the Jewish world covering pre and post the October 7, 2023 massacre. Has something fundamentally changed in the nature and scope of fundraising from pre to post October 7, 2023? Solly recalls in his foreward, a memory of the response of Jewish communities in South Africa and around the world “when confronted with Israel’s existential crises in the days leading up to the 6-Day War in June 1967, when mass graves were being prepared in Israel,” and how huge sums of money were raised with people “even pawning their jewelry and selling other items of value, to rally to the cause.”

Such was the passion and the commitment that has not only persisted but intensified over time. Rallying “to the cause” remains a key thread throughout Solly’s book and clearly reinforced following October 7.

“The massive challenge” in the post October 7 world, Solly writes, “is to focus on Israel’s long-term rehabilitation and reconstruction which will be incalculable.” His guess is that “donors will be faced with how to continue supporting the causes which speak most to them – and how to reconcile that, given the new realities of Israel’s desperate situation and plight, where one may feel obliged and compelled out of necessity, to engage in more Israel-centered philanthropy – a no-choice philanthropy. Of course, it doesn’t have to be an either-or choice: the pie can be expanded and there will be many who will give over and above.” I sense Solly is eluding here to the similarity of the calling today that transpired during the pre and post period of the 6-Day War.

**Man on a Mission**. Solly Kaplinski (right) on a JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) mission visiting local Jewish communities in Estonia, seen here in the capital Tallinn. (Photo: courtesy JDC)

Noting the current “frailty and fragility” of Israel’s current situation and “the horrific rise in antisemitism around the world,” Solly surmises that the current “joint partnership” between Israel and the Diaspora Jewry “may very well need to be refracted through a different prism.”

This intensified concern for Israel is shared by many of the donors Solly interviewed. Canadian philanthropist and corporate lawyer, Gail Asper from Winipeg, expressed that “…when Israel is in crisis as a result, for example, of the devastating and horrific attacks of October 7, 2023, I feel it is our responsibility to make Israel, the only home for the Jewish people, a top, unconditional priority.” President and a trustee of the Asper Foundation, Gail sums up a common sentiment of most donors when she concludes:

“If we all work together, we can ensure the Jewish people will flourish in perpetuity.”

In the same vein, Executive Director of ANKA Property Group, Vera Boyarsky from Sydney Australia believes:

“Without a healthy Israel we can’t hold our heads high and confidant. As my late father said, “Give till it hurts as it’s only money; the people in Israel are giving their lives.”

Set on addressing the needs of Israel’s tomorrows is Sir Mick Davis from London, whose brother Ricky Davis participated in Israel’s heroic Entebbe Raid of 1976. Says Davis:

“When this war is won…philanthropists will need to channel energy and passion into addressing the challenges of Israel’s future strength. For too long we have allowed massive economic, educational, and health disparities to fester in Israeli society, creating divisions that have been too easy for unscrupulous populists to exploit. We must strive to distribute access to the opportunities of Israel’s innovative economy the length and breadth of the country, across every section of the economy.”

**Jewish Outreach**. Inna Vdovychenko of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee meets with a Jewish senior in need in Odesa, Ukraine. (Photo: Courtesy JDC).

Davis sees the role of the philanthropist in “ensuring that Israel is able to maintain its qualitive edge in the years and decades to come,” and “while it is not ours to finish the job, our Jewish souls will not allow us to desist from it.”

In addition to a love of Israel is the aspect of family values, of instilling in the next generation the desire to contribute to the upliftment of those less fortune or in need. Both are best articulated by Jeremy Dunkel from Sydney, Australia:

“Philanthropy is often part of the conversation around our dinner table, as we hope to pass on our love for, and commitment to the global Jewish community to our children. The tragic events of October 7 have only reinforced this, illustrating that we are one people, and are collectively responsible for the welfare of our brothers and sisters in Israel, and throughout the Diaspora.”

Also emphasizing the enormous impact of October 7 is retired Baltimore judge, Ellen M. Heller. Raised in a modest “blue collar” East Baltimore neighborhood after the end of WWII “where we were the only Jewish family. My family, like others, lived modestly. Most of the clothes my sisters and I wore had been passed on by cousins.” For Ellen, October 7 is a date “that will always be in the annals of unthinkable, cruel pogroms against Jews: the slaughter of innocent people – grandparents, parents, children, infants. With this day of devastation, I have realized an important component of my philanthropy: the giving that comes from the emotion, the strong anguish to be of help and to save lives – in this instance Jewish lives, lives of our people. This giving derives from the basic instinct and determination that our people and the existence of our Jewish homeland must survive.”

For some of a particular generation, a strong motivation towards philanthropy has been the impact of the Holocaust. This is the case with Eva Fischl OAM, President of The Joint Australia, who defines herself “as a Holocaust survivor,” and says plainly, “my actions are a product of that definition.” Being a Holocaust survivor, “carries huge baggage around my survival. It depicts pain, anxiety, fear, sorrow, sometimes guilt of surviving with the knowledge that both family and others have died.” For Eva, it propelled a devotion “of 42 years of my life to my fellow Jews – anchored by the belief that the Shoah, the supreme example of rendering people powerless, behoves those that can – to help.”

So too are Lottie and Ervin Vidor from Sydney both Holocaust survivors, “who arrived in Australia with just the clothes on our backs.” Lottie came in 1949 “with my parents, after wandering around Poland for almost four years in the hope of getting a visa to the USA or Australia…”

For the Vidors, “…to support the local community as well as Israel is in our DNA – and makes us feel both humble and grateful.”

Originally from Cape Town South Africa Peter and Elaine Smaller from Sydney, have just celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary and are “enjoying the philanthropic side of our lives.” This would appear to be an important factor in sustaining enthusiasm for constantly giving. Peter says he grew up “in a household where philanthropy was ever present.” Of his parents, “I never heard them say no to anyone asking for help – both Jewish and non-Jewish causes.”

**From War to Work.** JDC has developed programs to help reservists and disabled veterans transition back to work and fill roles required by Israeli businesses in order to return to full productivity. Pictured here are reservists at a management training initiative. (Photo: Courtesy JDC).

Elaine sees the need “to build a strong Israel. Especially today. That sense of – we are nothing without a strong Israel-has driven my philanthropy. I am eternally grateful for those who live in Israel and face a daily existential threat, so that I can live in peace in the Diaspora.”

There are those that give out of deep religiosity. For Nicole Yoder of Jerusalem, “Giving reminds me that I have nothing that I didn’t receive as a blessing from above. This keeps me grounded. Giving enables me to express my compassion. I like to give where my giving can make a life changing difference to someone.” As Vice President for Aid & Aliyah at the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, “…it is a source of joy and fulfilment that the ICEJ has defended and stood with Israel, especially today.”

There are throughout instructive tidbits. For example, one anonymous donor from Washington, USA, expressed that what was especially important for him was “…that the maximum amount of my gift actually reaches the people in need and is not lost in the administration of the organization.” In this respect he refers to a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the early first century CE, Rabban Gamliel who once said, “Do not give an excess tithe through guesswork.” (Pirkei Avot 1:16).” In other words, “Do your homework!”

**Miracle Makers**. With entire cities and kibbutzim in Israel evacuated to hotels in the Dead Sea region, the JDC established temporary schools and kindergartens — in partnership with the Ministry of Education for 2,500 evacuated children also connecting these young people with teams of trauma psychologists. “Nothing Short of a Miracle”: Dead Sea Emergency Education …

For Kevin Kalinko of Sydney whose family supports many Israeli charities as well as local and international Jewish causes, one of the questions now being raised as they define their family’s philanthropic strategy is “Do we give more to fewer organizations or less to more organizations?” Wanting to optimize one’s impact, I assume it’s not an uncommon challenge to most philanthropists. An illuminating gem in the Kalinko interview was his recollection from his early 20s while backpacking in Turkey on a very tight budget, “I negotiated to buy yesterday’s bread for half price from the local bakery in Istanbul. One morning, I was sitting on the side of the road in front of the bakery, with yesterdays pide about to eat my breakfast,” when he noticed that the man sitting next to him had a selection of cheeses, olives, vegetables and bread. “He looked at my pide and back at his meal and then offered to share his meal. When I paid more attention to the man…I realized he was homeless. He had little to give but was willing to give that which was important him.” This story reminded me of Solly writing in his foreward of cases of Jews in the Diaspora in response to the 6-Day War of “even pawing their jewellery and selling other items of value, to rally to the cause.”

Solly delightfully likens a fundraiser to a shadchan – a matchmaker. He refers to a lesson he learnt from his teacher Rabbi Edward Abrahamson, “that a shadchan doesn’t just bring a man and a woman together to get married; he or she is giving them the great z’chut to find a partner in life, to raise a family – and to build a Jewish home. And in a similar vein, we as fundraisers, are helping donors to understand – and embrace the power that they have to do good and do what is just, right, honest and moral.”

In what motivates all these donors to so generously support causes “close to Home” – where ‘home’ could be the city where they live or their beloved Israel where their heart lies no less, I will end with Sara and Irwin Tauben of Montreal.

**Active in India**. Jewish philanthropy is not restrained by geography. Seen here is Solly Kaplinski, JDC’s Executive Director of Overseas Joint Ventures with professional JDC staff in Mumbai, India.

Like many of the donors in Solly’s book – as with Solly himself – the Holocaust casted a giant shadow over Irwin, whose parents were the “sole Shoah survivors of their families” and who came to Montreal “with nothing but love for each other and the will to succeed – and to give their family a better life.” One month after their arrival in Canada, Irwin was born.

Says Irwin who together with Sara, support causes in Canada, worldwide and Israel:

“My father used to tell us: ‘Never look up; always look down.’ This was his way of telling us not to envy those with more, but to be grateful that we can help those in need.”

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The book – useful for those in the field of fundraising and resource development – is available for free and can also be read free online at: www.journeysintothegentleheart.com

STOP THE ROT

Bibi, if you don’t or can’t stop the rot, it will consume all – is this what you want as your legacy?

By David E. Kaplan

If the ‘reason’ Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu presents for the firing of the country’s Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar is “a lack of trust”, then he should take cognizance that more than half the country feels the same way about him. A majority of Israelis, many of whom who voted for him, feel today of their prime minister – “a lack of trust”

By the same token as the fate befalling the internal security chief, should the prime minister not follow suit and exit office so that another can – not only lead – but restore a trust with the people of Israel, especially during a time of war that requires of its people unity not division and discord. This is not a right or left issue – it is a right and wrong issue!

**Facing Off**. Instead of fighting the enemy, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar (l) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (r) are now fighting each other with conflicting narratives. (Photos: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Like a lighthouse with its beam of light and loud foghorn warning of the danger to ships, Israel’s former esteemed Supreme Court justice, Aharon Barak, warns of the danger to the ship of state – Israel.

He fears his country is heading “to civil war.”

Who cannot fail to see and understand what is happening. The issues behind the groundswell of people out on the streets protesting during an existential war is being ignored by this government with a dismissive Marie-Antonette arrogance.

‘Lighthouse’ Barak asserts that “…the rift in the people is immense, with no effort made to heal it,” adding that if he were still chief justice, he would block the PM’s moves to fire the Shin Bet chief and attorney general which are pushing the country “toward civil war.”

The move by the prime minister by the way, marks the first time in Israeli history that the government has fired the head of the domestic security agency. His reasons for doing so are immersed not in the nation’s security but in this government’s insecurity. They are trying to avert an embarrassing enquiry called “Qatargate”, where it is alleged that close political advisors of the PM and a lieutenant colonel in the reserves, were involved in paid jobs for promoting the interests of the government of Qatar, an ally and financial supporter of Hamas. Irking the PM is that the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, is investigating the affair, which he described as “complex and multi-faceted.” No doubt; and what is also ‘no doubt’ is that these allegations – if proven to be true – reflects on the porous nature of the country’s national security. Have ‘fences’ of a different kind been breached, not the variety on the Gaza border but from within the very inner sanctums of Israel’s highest political echelon?

No less irksome to Bibi has been Bar pushing for a state commission of inquiry into October 7, a powerhouse probe to be led by a retired Supreme Court justice. This Bibi, unsurprisingly, has rejected. The urgent national need for such an investigation, “cannot be subordinated,” says Bar “to the personal considerations of those involved in the matter, as it is the only way to ensure that such a multi-system failure will not occur again.”

Again, this is not a right or left issue – it is a right and wrong issue!

Speaking to Ynet news shortly before Netanyahu convened the cabinet to vote on firing Bar, Aharon Barak, who served as a Supreme Court justice from 1978 to 1995 and then elected as the court’s president retiring in 2006, said:

“…the main problem in Israeli society is… the severe rift between Israelis.”

This rift now has momentum and is accelerating “and in the end,” said Barak, “I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm, causing a civil war.”

**Anxious Aharon**. Former Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme Court, Aharon Barak warns of deepening internal divisions, criticizing government’s moves on judiciary and opposes dismissal of Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar – urging compromise to prevent further democratic erosion. (Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)

Instead of toning down the temperature, the PM and his cabinet ministers – notably the high-profilers and moral defilers of the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – are by their conduct and rhetoric, inflaming tensions. Not only do they ignore the most respected and revered justice in Israel’s history but they dismiss him with such comments like from fellow MK and coalition partner, Almog Cohen of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party who said that Barak is “a reckless and irresponsible man,” who was “sent to issue a Sicilian mafia-style threat of blood in the streets and civil war.”

With mounting protests, who are in the words of Almog Cohen being “reckless” and “irresponsible”?

With the constant concern and trauma of our remaining hostages in captivity, where is the responsible leadership to stop this downward spiral into the abyss?

Even President Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, says Netanyahu’s methods in Gaza are against Israeli public opinion:

“I think Bibi believes that he’s doing the right thing. [However],I think he goes up against public opinion ’cause the public opinion [in Israel] wants those hostages home.”

Bibi looks for false support of the “will of the People” though the last election in 2022. Hardly persuasive when this supposed “will” is a result of a deviously concocted coalition, where his religious coalition partners that so enable him with vital votes, do not believe in the state of Israel nor serve in its defense and extort sizable chunks of the national budget for their causes that are at odds with the country’s national interest. Some “will of the People” the PM relies on to support his increasingly unpopular positions! Clutching at straws, he usurps Trump rhetoric of a “deep state” but there is no “deep state” only deep trouble this government is finding itself emersed in. As the former chief justice says:

“We’re not the United States; we don’t have a deep state here. We have loyal public servants here, and they do things according to the law.”

**Nation on the Edge**. “I think he goes up against public opinion,” says US Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff (l) of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(r). (Photo collage: Lior Segev, Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein,Reuters/Nathan Howard)

According to a Channel 12 opinion poll, 51% of Israelis oppose the firing of Bar, compared to 32% who back his dismissal, while 46% say they trust Bar more than they trust the prime minister.

These polls are hardly surprising and may explain why “Today there are demonstrations,” continues Barak, who warns of the societal fragility in the current climate and unforeseen incidents that can spark matters out of control. He refers to the car that drove into an anti-Netanyahu protest in Jerusalem when a driver rammed into a protester, injuring him. If this trajectory continues, Barak cautions:

“… tomorrow there will be shootings, and the day after that there will be bloodshed… ”

If warnings about October 7 were ignored, what is the excuse of this government to warnings of a people’s growing discontent to bulldozing policies that are anathema to this country’s DNA? With turmoil on our streets amidst an existential war on multiple fronts, editor Zvika Klein of The Jerusalem Post writes:

“With a war on seven fronts that appears to have no end in sight, a growing social split of historic proportions, and a rising cost of living, it can feel now as if it will never get any better, that we will never get past this point.”

It must and it will.

Israel needs now – more than ever – is a responsible leadership that is ready to run and not ruin the country!

Category: Personal Observations/Reflections

BLACK LIVES MATTER (BLM) – REALLY?

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FROM PLONSK TO A NATION

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POETS’ CORNER

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LETTER TO ‘LAY OF THE LAND’ READERS

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FROM ASHES TO DEFIANCE

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REFLECTIONS IN SUNNY EILAT

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BRIDGE THE GULF

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LESSONS FROM MY FRIEND’S EXECUTION IN IRAN’S EVIN PRISON

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HEARTWARMING INSIGHTS INTO JEWISH PHILANTHROPY

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STOP THE ROT

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