I was pleased, and frankly surprised, to see the major news networks covering the atrocities and horrific acts of barbarism Hamas has carried out. The question is how long will the networks continue to do so? How long will CNN continue to show images of innocent Jewish civilians being killed in cold blood? At what point will those images be completely replaced with images of Palestinian children in Gaza being rushed to hospitals?
On one hand, it shouldn’t matter. All that should matter is Israel’s moral right and duty to protect its citizens. But we’ve been down this road before. As Palestinian civilian casualties rise—and they will as Hamas continues to fire rockets from civilian areas—more pressure will be placed on Israel to restrain themselves. How long will Israel be able to resist that pressure? Right now, Israel and world Jewry are more united than ever, but as pressure mounts, not just from Israel’s critics but from her friends and allies, the USA among them, it will be on us, the Diaspora Jewish community, to stand strong for Israel, to remind the world that if Israel is not given the latitude to destroy Hamas—once and forever—this level of terrorism will happen again.
We, Diaspora Jewry, may not be called upon to serve in the IDF on the front lines as our brothers and sisters in Israel are now deployed to do, but we too have a war to fight. It is the war of public opinion. We must continue to remind the world of Hamas’s brutality. The networks and social media posts are doing that for us now, but it will soon be replaced by anti-Israel propaganda and rhetoric, at which point we must not give up the resolve we now have to stand behind Israel, for however long she deems it necessary to neutralize the threat.
The world will soon forget what Hamas did to our people last Shabbat, but we won’t. As the Hebrew Bible commands: “Zachor et asher asah lecha Amalek, remember what Amalek did to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17). Let us remember and make sure the world does not forget.
Rabbi Mark Wildes
Manhattan Jewish Experience
