A New Intifada

It’s Chol HaMoed here in Israel, a time for long awaited family trips, camping and fun. But instead of celebrating, we are mourning. On Friday, the first day of Chol HaMoed, Arab terrorists brutally murdered two young girls, Rina (20) and Maya (16) Dee, in a drive-by shooting in the Jordan Valley. Their mother, Leah Dee, died from her wounds three days later. The Dees, olim from England, live here in the Zayit neighborhood of Efrat, and our community is devastated, heartbroken and depressed. What can we say to our children, to Maya and Rina’s friends, who were sobbing uncontrollably at Rina and Maya’s funeral?

But this attack is only the latest horror. It was only a few weeks ago that Hallel and Yagel Yaniv were murdered in cold blood in Huwara, just outside of their home in Har Bracha, followed by the murder of Or Eshkar in Tel Aviv and Elan Ganeles in the Jordan Valley. Only a few weeks before that, another terrorist took the lives of Alter Shlomo Laderman and Yaakov and Asher Paley by running them over at a Jerusalem bus stop. And only a few weeks before that was the horrific shooting of seven Jews after Friday night davening at a shul in Neve Yaakov.

We are in the midst of another intifada, whether or not the government chooses to acknowledge it. Arabs are murdering Jews all over Israel, simply because we are Jews. We are under attack – and we need your help.

Every Jew, no matter where we may live in the world, must do what we can to support and protect our people. This is a defensive war, a war none of us want but which has been forced upon us, a war in which every Jew is obligated to fight. As Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet writes, “According to halachah, no Jew in the world, no one in Teaneck or Lakewood, is exempt from the army; every Jew must come and fight. It’s a milchemet mitzvah, an obligatory mitzvah to fight to defend our people.”

The brave IDF soldiers patrolling Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Huwara, Chevron and so many other dangerous places throughout our ancient homeland are on the front lines. Just behind them are their anxious parents who can’t sleep at night, but who put on a brave face for their sons and daughters on the front lines.

But what about the rest of us? What about the Jews of the Diaspora?

We only made Aliyah a few years ago, and so I remember well what it was like to be on the other side of the ocean, thousands of miles away from our homeland. You wake up in the morning to read about another terror attack, about another shattered Jewish family you didn’t know and whose name you will soon forget. You feel sad – but then you move on, because what else can you do?

I write this apprehensively and with humility; I know that until recently, I was in your shoes. But now that I am living here in Israel, I realize that even if you are far away, there is much you can and must do for your people. We are a small nation, without many friends in the world. We can’t afford for you to shake your head in sadness and then go about your day. We can’t become numb or apathetic. You may be far away, but we need you.

But before we get to practical steps, a few critical points:

Humility from Afar

The enemy we are fighting is evil. Regardless of what the New York Times reports, this isn’t a complicated issue, like judicial reform. Arabs are murdering Jews – in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria. They murder Jews of every kind – children and the elderly, men and women, religious and secular.

But it’s not merely a “handful” of terrorists, a few “bad apples” living among an otherwise peaceful society. Arabs in Yehuda and Shomron overwhelmingly support acts of terror. A recent poll by The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reports that 71% of Arabs in Yehuda and Shomron support the brutal murder of Hallel and Yagel Yaniv. 71%!

Arabs don’t simply support the murder of our children; they celebrate it. After the slaughter of seven Jews in Neve Yaakov, tens of thousands of Arabs throughout Yehuda and Shomron celebrated in the streets, set off fireworks and handed out candies to their children (look it up on Youtube – it’s disturbing, but it will give you clarity on the nature of our enemy). Nor is any of this new. During the Gulf War, as Sadam Hussein’s Iraq launched scud missiles at Tel Aviv, our Arab neighbors danced on their roofs with joy and chanted: “Ya Saddam, ya habib, udrub udrub Tel Abib!” (Yah, Saddam, bomb, bomb, Tel Aviv!). And as Americans, we must never forget the mass Arab celebrations on 9/11.

First, this is a battle of good versus evil. The Jewish people are an imperfect but fundamentally good and holy nation, while the Arabs have built a sick, violent and evil society that raises its children to hate and murder. Obviously, there are many individual Arabs who are fine people, and some even support Israel as a Jewish state. I am speaking here about the sickness of the Arabs in Yehuda and Shomron as a collective people. What do they stand for, other than murdering Jews? What have they contributed to the world, other than death and terrible suffering?

Jewish Efrat and Arab Beit Lechem are “sister cities”; geographically, they are contiguous, like Englewood and Teaneck. Every day, Arabs come to Efrat to work as carpenters and construction workers, and they make good money doing so. They do not fear entering our homes. But when was the last time a civilian Jew walked the streets of Beit Lechem? We’ve lived in Efrat for almost two years, but I’ve never once driven into Beit Lechem – and for good reason. I’d be taking my life in my hands. Just ask the German tourists who recently drove to Shechem with Israeli license plates and were nearly lynched.

Many Jews in Israel must live with these people every day. They are all around us. The Arab behind the counter at the local supermarket seems like a nice guy, but can we really know? The man who rammed his car into a crowd of Italian tourists on Shabbat Chol HaMoed in Tel Aviv was a janitor at an Israeli middle school in Kiryat Ono, where he was very friendly with the Jewish students. And yes – he was also an Israeli citizen.

The Jewish heroes living in yishuvim like Har Bracha deal with all this – and much, much more. Shmuel Sackett, a Har Bracha resident, says that every day, at least 20 Jewish cars are stoned while driving through Huwara, the Arab village Jews must drive through to reach Har Bracha. Stoning cars, he explained, means “throwing bricks and dropping cinder blocks from rooftops. Imagine a young mother with 3 children in her car, driving home from the supermarket. As she is driving, a brick comes crashing through her windshield. The shock of what happened is enough to give her a heart attack! The children start screaming, there is broken glass everywhere, but she cannot stop for help because she’s in the middle of Huwara with a mob just waiting to finish the job.” (Daniel Greenfield, Hollow Sanctimony Over Huwara, Jewish Press, March 15, 2023).

Why am I repeating so much of what you already know? Because unfortunately, far too many American Orthodox Jews don’t really grasp what is happening here. The night after the Yaniv brothers were murdered, some of the Jewish youth of Har Bracha – whose friends were just murdered in cold blood – set fire to a junkyard full of cars in Huwara (a junkyard owned by a confirmed terrorist). A few of them threw stones and smashed things.

From a safe distance, American Jewish organizations responded by condemning the murder of the Yaniv brothers and the response of angry youth from Har Bracha in the same breath – as if somehow, they are equally to blame. American Rabbis, living thousands of miles away from the harsh realities of life in the Shomron, dedicated their Shabbat Zachor drashot to condemning Jewish vigilantism.

I’m not condoning what the boys in Har Bracha did. But believe me, I understand them – and I will not judge them. Imagine, G-d forbid, that Arabs living in Patterson repeatedly murdered innocent Jewish teenagers on the streets of Passaic and Teaneck. How would you react? If some angry Jewish teens responded as some of the teens in Har Bracha responded, would you condemn them with the same passion that you would condemn the murderers?

Is it possible that some Modern Orthodox Jews are so concerned about the approval of the New York Times that they feel the need to give credence to their “cycle of violence” nonsense? The answer, sadly, is yes.

Second, Rav Soloveitchik once said that “the Torah will not find its actualization in the Land of Israel through rabbinical assemblies, nor through advice given by privileged New Yorkers to the fighters on the barricades in Jerusalem, nor by writing flowery articles. Rather, it will be achieved only through participating in the building of the land, by hewing stones and draining swamps, defending cities and colonies, through work and self-sacrifice (Jewish Sovereignty and the Redemption of the Shekhinah, June 1948).

In other words, before anything else, Jews living in the diaspora must recognize with humility that they are not on the frontlines of the battle for Eretz Yisrael. When your children aren’t serving in the IDF, when your children can safely attend school without fear of Arab terrorists, you should think very carefully before publicly criticizing the children of Har Bracha. Instead, if you have any tears to spare, cry for the heroic Yaniv family, who have shown superhuman strength in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Third, being a family means showing loyalty even when you disagree or don’t understand. This means that disagreements are discussed behind closed doors. Put another way, when you publicly criticize Israel, who is your audience?

Fourth, we might disagree about the best way to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict, but even the most ardent supporters of the “peace process” cannot undermine our Biblical right to all of Judea and Samaria. You might think that living in Efrat or Har Bracha is unwise, but it is not wrong.

The Jews of Israel do not need public condemnations and self-righteous judgment. They need love, and lots of it.

Practical Suggestions

How can you help the Jews of Israel when you live six thousand miles away? Here are a few practical suggestions; I’m sure you can think of many more:

Show that you Care

The silence from the broader world is deafening. Arabs murdering Jews again in Israel? Yawn.

It hurts. We are suffering, and nobody cares.

Imagine if busloads of Jews from Fair Lawn, New Milford and West Orange came to Har Bracha for a day to stand in solidarity with the community. Imagine hundreds of American Jews coming to Efrat to show the world that the Dee family matters! It would send an incredibly powerful message of unity and love.

What if the thousands of Jews who regularly visit Israel as tourists came with a different mindset? What if they came not for personal pleasure or inspiration, but to fulfill their obligation to fight to support Am Yisrael in its milchemet mitzvah?

The young people of Efrat are shattered. The Dee girls were their close friends, their madrichot in Ezra youth groups and Olim camp. What if the teenagers of Frisch, TABC and Kushner wrote letters to the teenagers of Efrat, to show them that they’re not alone?

None of this would stop the terrorists from trying to kill us. But it would give us the strength we need to keep fighting.

Ensure Terror Victims are Not Forgotten

Israelis are constantly dealing with the next attack and the latest tragedy. Above all, it’s critical not to give into terror, to continue living life. When you’re living on the front lines, you don’t always have the head space and emotional capacity to deal with the horrific trauma of the victims and their families.

But we can’t allow terror victims to be forgotten, to become yesterday’s news. The families of the victims will suffer for the rest of their lives. They will never move on.

Jews living in the diaspora can play an important role in making sure terror victims and their families are not forgotten. Yes, there are wonderful organizations that you can support, organizations that help the families of terror victims. But just making an annual $36 contribution and moving on with our lives is not enough!

Take a moment to google Cheryl Unterslak, a South African Jew who has dedicated much of the last twenty years of her life to ensuring terror victims and their families are not forgotten. Give her a call, and join her on one of her trips to visit these suffering families.

If you can’t get to Israel, then write letters to the families, to let them know that you’re thinking of them and that they are not forgotten. Imagine if every Orthodox Jew in America wrote a letter of love to a family shattered by terror. What a powerful message that would send!

We must find a way to keep these families and their pain in our consciousness. Their lives will never be the same again – and neither can ours.

Tangible Prayer

Commendably, many people in our communities participate in Tehillim groups. What if every Tehillim group decided to “adopt” and daven for a unit of IDF soldiers? When some members of the Tehillim group visit Israel, they can meet the unit they will be davening for, and get to know the soldiers who are putting their lives on the line to protect us all. Religious or secular, I am certain that it would mean a lot to every IDF soldier to know that there are Jews in America davening for them every day!

Final Thoughts

I know how hard it is to feel the pain of Am Yisrael and to act with urgency when you are thousands of miles away from what is happening in Israel. I get it, I really do.

But how will we stand before God one day and say: “My people were under attack, and I did nothing but sigh”? Wherever we live, we are God’s holy and chosen people. Israel is our land. We can and must do more.

If the rabbis of our community lead the way and act – amazing. If not, respectfully challenge them and say “Rabbi, what are we doing to help?” If they still drag their feet, move forward without them. Am Yisrael is at war, and every Jew has a role to play. It’s all hands on deck.

Here in Efrat, the entire community is weeping together, and davening together, in a way I never experienced in America. May Hashem wipe away the tears from all our faces, and soon bring the day when the Dees, Yanivs and all of the other bereaved families of Israel are reunited with their loved ones.

And may we soon see the day that Malachi, that last of our prophets, promised would come: “For that day is at hand, burning like an oven. All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, and the day that is coming, says the lord of Hosts, shall burn them to ashes… And you shall trample the wicked to a pulp, for they shall be dust beneath your feet on the day that I am preparing, said the lord of Hosts.” (Malachi 3:19, 21)

Elie Mischel was the Rabbi of Congregation Suburban Torah in Livingston, NJ until he and his family made Aliyah in the summer of 2021.