Tisha B’Av – Remember, Mourn, Endure, Triumph.

                      

Kedoshot -- Some of the girls and women who were slaughtered Al Kiddush HaShem (fo the sanctification of G-d's name) in the October 7th attacks.

Tisha B’Av – Remember, Mourn, Endure, Triumph.

By Howard Barbanel.

There is no sadder day on a Jewish calendar that is rife with them. Tisha B’Av, the Ninth day of the month of Av is a day of fasting, reciting Lamentations, reading the Scroll of Eicha and reflecting on the countless woes that have befallen our people across the millennia.

There is an old joke that says, “all Jewish holidays are, they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” This is not that kind of a day. On this day they did succeed in killing vast numbers of us and so there is no eating.

It was in the year 586 BCE that the Kingdom of Judea along with the King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem were destroyed by the Babylonians. Lost forever was Moses’ Ark of the Covenant which contained the tablets of stone engraved by G-d himself, all the holy vessels but more importantly, the direct connection with G-d’s divine presence which rested upon the Holy of Holies each Yom Kippur.

In the year 70 CE Jerusalem and the second Temple fell to the Romans who hauled away the giant Menorah which can be seen carved into the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. In the war against Rome more than 800 Jewish villages and towns were destroyed, countless slaughtered and enslaved.

The remnant of Judea rebelled against Rome some 60 years later and the last Jewish stronghold of Betar was overrun putting an end to the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. A year later the Romans plowed the site of the Temple Mount to erase our presence there. Yet Jews never ceased living in the Land of Israel from that day to this.

But the Tisha B’Av tragedies are not done yet…The Crusades were launched on this day in the year 1096, the Jews of England were expelled in 1290; the expulsion from Spain in 1492; Hitler’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was approved on this day in 1941 and the start of mass deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka began on Tish B’Av 1942. The cumulative generations of Jewish martyrs from all the above are so plentiful that they defy being numbered.

So, what does this have to do with us today? So many of these tragedies occurred far, far in the past. We lack “footage” and images from most of them, relying on the written testimony of our ancestors. How can we wrap our heads around the innumerable dead and mourn for them?

In the Passover Haggadah we say that in every generation there arise against us those who would annihilate us, but the Holy One Blessed Be He delivers us from their hands. Right now, today, in our faces here in the US and across the Earth the Jewish people are confronting a violent tsunami of antisemitism both verbal and physical. Just two days ago we saw a Hitlerian speech by New York’s Mayor Mamdani. Social media is a cesspool of incessant hate.

Chapter Three of the Scroll of Eicha says “You have heard their insults, Lord, all their designs regarding me. The speech and thoughts of my enemies are against me all day long.”

The miasma of enmity against us can seem overwhelming. How best to easily identify with it and mourn? I’d like to suggest recalling all of the young Jewish women who were murdered and sexually violated during the October 7^th invasion of Southern Israel by Hamas almost three years ago. If there is anything that was a greater recent tangible assault on our people and on our honor, I’m at a loss to put my finger on it. In Chapter Five of Eicha, Jeremiah writes “they ravaged women in Zion; maidens in the towns of Judah.” In Chapter Three, “my eyes have brought me grief over the daughters of my city.” In a new Kinah (dirge or lamentation) by Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon about the Gaza war, he writes, “roses were murdered, a desecration of G-d name…how did the precious children of Zion fall into the hand of accursed rapists, the plucked of cheek were given over to the attackers?”

See the screenshot images of some of our murdered daughters accompanying this article and internalize the grief. Beating back the attackers and the would-be annihilators from Gaza, the IDF soldiers transformed grief into rage and rage into resolve. Resolve that the lives and honor of our women and of our children and of our elderly will be avenged, now, before our eyes and future occurrences prevented. What kind of people would we be if we let this go unanswered?

For this we are accused of “genocide,” but if thousands of women in any other country were sullied and grotesquely murdered what would their leaders and their armies do? Chapter Three of Eicha ends by saying “Pay them back their due, Lord, as they have done. Give them a broken heart; may your curse be upon them! Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens…”

Thankfully, Tisha B’Av is but one day on the Jewish calendar. From our holy ashes a new, bright Jewish future has emerged in Israel. Better to be reviled than pitied. As we have survived past challenges so will we triumph over those of today and tomorrow. The struggle to defend G-d’s truth in the world is never ending. The forces of evil cannot be permitted to prevail. Our 3,500-year Jewish journey will endure and that endurance is the ultimate Jewish victory.

This is The “Art of the Deal?”

This is The “Art of the Deal?”

By Howard Barbanel

Is Barack Obama running foreign policy in the second Trump Administration? It sure seems like it. Recall Obama sending actual pallets of cash to Iran in the waning days and hours of his second term? Recall his acceding to most of Iran’s demands just to get an agreement – any agreement? Recall his horrible agreement which enabled Iran to build thousands of ballistic missiles and continue to enrich uranium?

Now comes along one of the most maddening accords ever agreed to. Have you read the 14 points in the memorandum? You’re not alone. Practically nobody has. It’s being done on the QT via executive order without any Congressional oversight (sounds like Obama too). it’s not even a treaty or even a contract, it’s really just the umpteenth ceasefire sweetened by tons of black and green sugar. By that I mean oil and money, which seem to speak louder than right and wrong.

Supposedly, some $24 to $25 billion in frozen assets will be released to Iran during the 60-day negotiation period to devise a treaty and theoretically dispose of Iran’s enriched uranium. Meanwhile, Iran is looking for $300 billion in reparations to rebuild everything the US and Israel destroyed and you can bet your bottom dollar that will include the terrorist infrastructure surrounding Israel. The Strait of Hormuz has been ceded to Iran’s ultimate control and you can bet this sword of Damacles will be wielded whenever it suits the mullahs to take the world economy hostage.

More significantly, the rumor is the US is agreeing not to foment regime change in Teheran and interfere in their internal affairs. Iran will agree not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, but they’ve been making this promise for decades, insisting their program is for civilian use. If that’s not enough, the US will lift its blockade of Iranian ports and oil exports, thereby effectively rearming Iran with billions in oil sales each month – money that will not go not to the Iranian people but to procure weapons from China and Russia and strengthen the repression of their population. You can also bet that funds will find round-about routes to Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

Israel’s hand is being checked and its arms tied behind its back as Trump caved to Iranian demands that Lebanon be linked to any deal with Iran. Hamstringing Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon is unconscionable and will create friction with Washington.

That this awful deal was negotiated by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is another disgrace. Two New York Jewish real estate guys reporting to another real estate guy (Trump) with everyone hot for a deal – any deal – just to make a deal. Witkoff is naïve and inexperienced to the extreme and Kushner ought to know better.

On September 30, 1938, British prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich accords with Hitler, a low point of Western weakness and appeasement for a “pledge of peace.” The footage of Chamberlain landing back in Britain, waving a piece of paper gloating about “peace in our time” is an iconic image of the foolishness of believing and trusting in dictators – all because the West lacked the backbone to enforce the Versailles treaty. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Rippentropp told Hitler that he should sign Chamberlain’s document because it’s just a piece of paper and that Nazi Germany will ultimately do whatever it wants. We know what happened next.

At the end of the day the derisive term “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) has held true here. Instead of ridding the earth of the dangerous fanatical regime in Iran, he’s opted for the photo op. Trump has zero stomach for any dead soldiers, even one is too much. Can’t handle the blood. The Iranians know this. They also know high oil prices and inflation are jeopardizing the Republicans’ chances of retaining the House and Senate in the midterms – and Trump blinked first, gambling that $3 a gallon gas and low inflation could bolster the GOPs chances in November.

The US Marines could have taken Karg Island and the Strait in a few days but probably many would be killed or injured, so instead of guts and glory, Trump raised the white flag and is embellishing that flag with all kinds of money for the mullahs. Disgraceful. And I don’t believe for a second that Iran will agree to the seizure and disposal of its enriched uranium and the kind of inspections and enforcement to keep them from a bomb.

It pains me to say this, but had Trump been President during World War II, he’d be berating Churchill not to fight and looking for a “deal” with the Nazis on the eve of D-Day leaving them in control of France because he wouldn’t be able to stomach the 2,500-plus US casualties on day one of a Normandy invasion.

The prophet Ezekiel (chapter 13, verse 10) famously says to the leaders of Judea, " because they have misled My people, saying, 'Peace,' when there is no peace; and when the people build a flimsy wall, behold, they plaster it with whitewash."

This just kicks the can down the road which like in 1938 will lead to a more deadly confrontation down the road, perhaps horrifically with nuclear weapons.

The Zeitgeist

The Lessons of Bondi Beach

By Howard Barbanel

Let’s be perfectly blunt -- The Bondi Beach Chanukah Massacre happened because the Feckless Woke Liberal government in Australia has allowed two-plus years of nonstop pro-Hamas pro-Gaza rallies in their major cities (much as London has), non-stop verbal violence like the “Long Live The Intifada” rallies at Sydney’s Bondi Beach (the footage is easily searchable) preceding the massacre, the 100,00-strong pro-Hamas marches across the Sydney Bridge along with attacks on a Melbourne synagogue and kosher market in Sydney this year as well.

As with most Woke governments, Conservative speech has been squelched and throttled while the most vile radical hate-filled words from Islamists and the far left are actually protected by the government instead of condemned. Warnings from the Australian Jewish community went unheeded and were in fact derided. Given all that, what do you expect will eventually happen?

Australia, much as with the rest of the Woke-led Left tolerates and enables limitless Moslem migration – people with no proclivity to acculturate or assimilate into the cultures and societies of the nations to which they migrate. It is a perverse form of reverse colonialization whereby the irrationally guilt-stricken majority white population not only welcomes the dilution and subversion of their cultures but actually pays to make it so by proffering extraordinarily generous welfare benefits to the migrants which often exceed those given to their own citizens. The Woke self-loathing of their own national origins, traditions and cultures is alarming and dangerous because this delusional self-inflicted self-flagellation could lead to the end of The West as we’ve known it and that could lead to the end of order and freedom in the world as well which depends on a strong West. The US, not immune, was careening headlong down this path between 2021 and January 2025. The Islamists, in an astonishing alliance with the far left sows chaos and violence in every Western nation – a cancerous malignancy that needs immediate surgery.                                      

The murder of 16 at Bondi Beach can be described as the first official act of the terrorist State of Palestine in Australia. Australia (along with the UK, Canada, France, Spain, and Ireland) officially recognized "Palestine" towards the end of the Gaza War. The complete unmooring of a basic moral compass during the war by Woke Western governments leads in a direct line to the intimidation, harassment, and murder of innocent Jews. Trump should be praised for rolling back all this Woke snowflake pro-Hamas bile across the US government and academia. Were I living in New York City, I'd be very afraid of what is coming under a Mayor Mamdani. Just look to London for a crystal-ball view. London also has a leftist-Moslem mayor.

This teaches us that sadly the Chanukah story is still incredibly relevant in our time -- not the menorahs and latkes so much -- but the 30-year war for independence to restore divine revealed morality as related in the Books of the Maccabees which culminated in the recapture and rededication (Chanukat HaMisbeach) of the Temple in Jerusalem. The struggle for Jewish security and freedom continues in our time as we're faced with unrelenting and unrepentant hatred all around us. Why are we so hated? Because the Jewish people stand in the way of evil’s march across the earth. At the end of the day, what we really have are each other. The lights of the Menorah show the world that we will not be silenced, cowed, or eradicated. Truth and decency will continue its forward march even in the face of Islamist and Woke headwinds. May this Chanukah rededicate us to the struggle.