August 6, 2025

Today, when you spy bored kids dragged along by their parents shopping, touring, or visiting relatives, only the tops of their heads are visible. Bent down, as if praying, they stare at their dumb-making “smart” phones. Growing up, when we Troy boys were held parental hostage, we too bowed in supplication – but our heads were buried in books.

Perhaps the only thing worse than Generation TikTok’s disinterest in great books, is so many of their teachers’ “success” in repelling them from reading. Too many – not all! – professors use books as battering rams to shove their politics onto their students, rather than as launching pads for enlightenment, excitement, and engagement with critics – Marx forbid!

In their recent working paper “Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues,” Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik examine 27 million syllabi the “Open Syllabus Project” (OSP) amassed worldwide since 2008. They discover “a strong asymmetry” when most professors approached three explosive topics – “racial bias in the American criminal justice system, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the ethics of abortion.” Most syllabi feature defining, left-leaning texts without offering alternatives.

Characteristically, Edward Said’s anti-Western, anti-Zionist “Orientalism” is “the 16th most assigned text in the OSP database, appearing in nearly 16,000 courses.” It’s “more popular than any work in the old Western canon,” assigned twice as often as John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Yet few pair Said’s book with any thoughtful critique.

The authors conclude: “professors generally insulate their students from the wider intellectual disagreement that shape these important controversies. That is the academic norm …”

Two marvels of civilization are crumbling together: the joy of reading a book and the thrill of sharpening thoughts – and elbows – through critical debate.

There’s nothing like opening a great book, then surrendering to the author’s ability to introduce you to a new world – while expanding your understanding of your own. Sometimes, it comes from encountering a different time or place. Sometimes, it comes from getting new glasses that illuminate where we are right here, right now, differently. Moreover, the discipline required to finish many books generates the same character-building satisfaction experienced by athletes who won’t quit.

There’s nothing like opening a great book, then surrendering to the author’s ability to introduce you to a new world – while expanding your understanding of your own. 

Some books pile on facts. Some books run on images or metaphors. Some are character-driven, others by plot, still others by the sheer power of ideas. But good ones open new horizons.

My brother Dr. Tevi Troy, talented eight-time author and reader extraordinaire, reads over 100 books a year. “To do that,” he explains, “you have to be really excited to jump into each book.” When I asked for his favorite book, he answered, “in some ways, my favorite book is the next one, or the one I haven’t read yet.”

Still, he added: “Two books that really inspired me are J. Anthony Lukas’ ‘Common Ground,’ on the busing fight in Boston, and Allan Bloom‘s ‘The Closing of the American Mind.'” Lukas time-travels readers back to an epic political and social struggle in the 1970s, while Bloom challenges readers to contrast their superficial worldviews with traditional great books and eternal Western values. Tevi continued: “I read both books in my early 20s.  They helped me see how books can open one up to new worlds and new ideas. I have vivid memories of walking down [Washington] D.C. sidewalks while reading ‘Common Ground,’ eager to get to the next page.”

Nevertheless, as entrancing and illuminating as reading adventures can be, like hugs, you can’t do it alone.  From Talmudic sages to constitutional scholars to literary geniuses, the greatest minds are sharpened by debate — in Hebrew, machloket. The root, overlapping with the word, chelek, fragment, means division, dispute, disagreement. The Talmud, Avot 5:17, says great arguments are for the sake of heaven. For our polarized, combative culture, a better word is “parse” –  in Hebrew, lenateach, evoking a surgeon, menateach.

We’re trained to win debates and arguments. Universities should invite students to plunge into great debates, drawing knowledge from them, then parsing the arguments. Confront alternative viewpoints. Then, open the hood, disassembling the book’s logic. Understand how it was built, how to rebuild it, and either reconstruct it exactly – or add your own twist, even a breakthrough or 20.

Decades ago, Yale’s legendary literary critic, Harold Bloom, feared that the “School of Resentment,” filled with grievance-slingers reading everything through hyper-politicized multicultural, feminist, or Marxist lenses would distort the great books – and academy – he cherished. His classic, now politically incorrect, 1994 work, “The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages,” proclaimed: “Aesthetic value emanates from the struggle between texts: in the reader, in language, in the classroom, in arguments within a society. Aesthetic value rises out of memory, and so (as Nietzsche saw) out of pain, the pain of surrendering easier pleasures in favor of much more difficult ones.”

 Then the punchline: “successful literary works are achieved anxieties, not releases from anxieties.”

Indeed, today’s hyper-anxious students would benefit from such “achieved anxieties.” Tevi Troy notes that healthy democracies need engaged, thoughtful, even anguished, readers. “It’s hard to have a successful representative democracy if you don’t have an informed populace, and it’s hard to get an informed populace if citizens don’t read,” he observes. “One reason the American Revolution was so successful was that the literacy rate of the Colonists was much higher than in Europe at the time. Americans shared ideas through reading. What they read inspired them to fight for their liberty.” More than a century and a half later, during “World War II, American soldiers fought Nazi tyranny with great works of literature in their backpacks.”

While not always trendy or easy, reading should be deep and defining. “If I know what you read, it tells me a lot about who you are,” Troy adds. “When I start teaching a class, I ask each student to tell me their favorite (non-Harry Potter) book.”

Perhaps, all students, young and old, should ask themselves: what’s my favorite (non-Harry Potter) book? With whom would I like to parse its argument? And what anxieties do I hope to achieve this year?

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Gil Troy, a senior fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath” were just published. 

This week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling that could become a watershed in the legal fight against antisemitism. In a powerful preliminary injunction, the court protected our client Kimmara Sumrall, a proud Jewish Zionist who was violently assaulted for simply wearing an Israeli flag. More than a legal win, this was also a moral victory in that the court affirmed what too many try to deny — that antisemitism is a form of racial hatred; that our laws, when applied properly, are capable of confronting it; and that attacking a Jewish person wearing a Jewish flag as a symbol of her racial heritage is not a political statement, it is a hate crime. 

Ms. Sumrall was demonstrating peacefully at the U.S. Capitol last fall when Janine Ali — a member of the extremist hate group CODEPINK — approached her, grabbed the flag Ms. Sumrall wore around her neck, and yanked hard enough to choke and disorient her. A U.S. Capitol Police officer witnessed the incident and arrested Ali on the spot.

In granting the injunction, an “extraordinary remedy granted sparingly,” the Court swiftly rejected Ali’s argument that the attack was somehow “just anti-Israel” and not antisemitic. The judge called it “quite a stretch,” noting that Ms. Sumrall was clearly targeted because of the Jewish symbol that she wore. As the court powerfully stated, “The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish race … targeting the Star of David is as racially motivated as [using] the highly offensive racial slur, [the n-word].”  

The case is noteworthy in that it utilizes a virtually forgotten provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed just after the Civil War to eliminate all incidents of racial violence. That rarely invoked portion reads in relevant part: “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right to  …  the full and equal benefit of all laws … for the security of persons and property.” As the court explicitly recognized, Ms. Sumrall was not a representative of any government. She was just a Jewish woman wearing a universally recognized Jewish symbol, and she was entitled to her safety. The Star of David didn’t stop being a racial marker when the concentration camps were liberated. It was used then to single Jews out for persecution, and today, we wear it as a symbol of identity and resilience. Either way, its meaning hasn’t changed — it stands for the Jewish race, and those who target it do so with intent. In recognizing that simple truth, the Court cut right through the semantic games that anti-Zionist antisemites like to play when they try to deny their motivations.  

As the court explicitly recognized, Ms. Sumrall was not a representative of any government. She was just a Jewish woman wearing a universally recognized Jewish symbol, and she was entitled to her safety.

For legal scholars and civil rights advocates alike, this is important. In the post–Oct. 7 landscape, Jewish communities have faced a surge in violence and intimidation. Yet legal remedies have often been elusive — partly because Jewish identity, and the corresponding manifestations of antisemitism, are so multifaceted, incorporating aspects of race, religion, culture, national origin and ethnicity. It is too often too easy for antisemites to hide behind this ambiguity, commit horrible acts with impunity, and then claim their actions do not constitute antisemitism because the act was not based on this or that particular protected characteristic. That vagueness is at the very core of an equal protection deficit that has contributed to the increasing rates of antisemitic incidents we are seeing across the country. This ruling is a crystal-clear example of moral clarity and common sense that should be followed by other courts everywhere. 

For the record, whether Jews are or are not a scientifically separate race may be debatable, as much of modern science regards the category of race itself as a social construct. But that is a wholly different question than whether Jews experience racism and racial discrimination. Racism is the belief that innate inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior. Racial discrimination takes place when people treat others differently because of their perception of that other person’s race, whether scientifically accurate or not. For example, whether or not Jews are scientifically a race, it is undeniably true that the Nazis killed six million Jewish men, women and children because they believed that Jews were racially inferior. As it relates to this case, as the Supreme Court held in St. Francis Coll. v. Al-Khazraji, 481 U.S. 604 (1987), “based on the history of § 1981 … Congress intended to protect from discrimination identifiable classes of persons who are subjected to intentional discrimination solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics… whether or not it would be classified as racial in terms of modern scientific theory.” And, as the Court explained in its sister case Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, decided the same day, for the purposes of the 1866 law, that category includes Jewish people.

Ms. Sumrall’s case is the first we know of since Oct. 7 in which a Jewish plaintiff has used this particular civil rights provision to sue an assailant for antisemitic violence. I suspect it will not be the last. The floodgates are open, and with them, a new pathway to justice for Jews whose safety, dignity, and voice have been stifled by fear. This is not about Jewish exceptionalism it is simply about establishing equality. If grabbing a Jewish star to choke a Jewish woman isn’t antisemitism, then nothing is and no Jews are safe. Thank God for common sense principles, and for judges who can apply them.

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Mark Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro University. Matthew Mainen is litigation counsel at NJAC.

Two years before the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published a summary of an outrageous conference, “Promise of the Hereafter Post-Liberation Conference,”held by Hamas in Gaza on how to administer liberated Palestine after Israel disappears.

Fighters (Israeli soldiers, I assume) would be killed. Those attempting to flee could do so, or be detained and undergo criminal prosecution. However, to prevent a brain drain, educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry would be retained. They would not leave taking with them the knowledge they had acquired “while living in our land and enjoying its bounty.”

By this somewhat backhanded compliment, Hamas joined the rest of the world in acknowledging the intellectual prowess of the Jewish people.

Jews like to cite the statistic that while Jews make up only 0.2 percent of the world’s population, 22 percent of Nobel prizes awarded thus far have gone to Jews (or individuals with Jewish ancestry). Likewise, that two-thirds of the leadership of the Theoretical Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Manhattan Project, those who calculated critical mass and modeled implosions during the development of the atom bomb, were Jews.

In the 18th century, the celebrated French writer Voltaire described Jews as a crude and ignorant people. By the late 19th century, however, after the enlightenment and Jewish emancipation in Europe, the situation was very different. In an 1899 Harper’s Magazine article called “Concerning the Jews,” Mark Twain tabulated Jewish achievements in business, literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning “away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.”

Until 1948, Jewish intellectual achievements were essentially diaspora milestones. Now, Israeli scholars have also been the recipients of awards, including 13 Nobel prizes, a commendable number for a small country with a relatively small population.

Israel’s educational institutions have deep roots, going back to pre-Mandate times and the creation of the first Jewish agricultural school, Mikve Israel, in 1870. Today, Israel is home to nine universities and 53 colleges and the country is a powerhouse in a wide range of intellectual pursuits including literature (7000 books published yearly), music, art and Judaic studies. We should not be surprised to learn that a 19-year old Israeli undergraduate at the Technion, Revital Wallach, recently won an International Physics Olympiad in a competition with 370 students from 74 countries. Or, that Israel’s national chemistry team dominated a competition involving students from 89 other countries, winning two gold and two silver medals (Joanie Margulies).

However, it is Israel’s economy and its achievements as the “start-up nation” that have attracted the most attention. You would think that a small country embroiled in a long, 21-month existential war with Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis would be facing economic ruin. Yet the data reported recently indicate the opposite.

Israel’s stock market is at a record high. Israeli stocks have surged 200 percent from a post-Oct. 7 low. Participation in retail investment has surged, along with foreign investment in Israeli equities, the latter driven largely by increased investor confidence in Israeli technology and defence sectors. An April 2025 OECD report indicates that the Israeli economy has been remarkably resilient to the shock of Oct. 7 and the subsequent war. A vibrant high technology sector and deft financial management were factors noted. Additionally, as World Bank data show, Israel spends more on research and development, by far, than any other country. The amount, six percent of GDP, is double the average for the 38 OECD countries and more than triple that of my own country, Canada.

Israeli technology strengths are in cybersecurity, financial technology and AI, but defence technology is growing in importance. Existential threats faced by Israel, almost continuously since its creation, have emphasized the need to develop a weapons capability that is always at least one step ahead of its adversaries. Israeli technology protects Israeli tanks from Hamas antitank missiles in Gaza, while new laser-based systems were effective in protecting Israeli civilians and civilian infrastructure from dangerous Hezbollah drones and Iranian drones.

The international community has taken note. In 2024, Israeli arms exports reached a record  $14.8 billion dollars. Also, the Iron Dome defense system was sold to Romania for 2.2 billion dollars, the first sale of the system to a European country. (Germany and Finland purchased the Arrow 3 and David’s Sling missile interceptor systems in 2023.)

Jewish achievements are usually attributed to factors such as literacy and the emphasis on education, strong community bonds, and the values expressed in the Judaism. However, external factors are equally important. Many of the staggering achievements by Jews, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, can be related to the same underlying basis–extreme pressure from a hostile environment. Moreover, as a reminder of the conspiracy theories and accusations Jews have faced in previous centuries, as well as today, Israel’s recent show of military strength in Iran, neutralizing Iranian air defenses and intercepting most of Iran’s missiles and drones, has been attributed to the occult and supernatural spirits.

By consistently outperforming expectations, and not only surviving but also thriving in spite of the hostile forces that surround it, Israel can be described as the Jew among the nations.

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Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.

What Do You Do When Someone Insults Your People—Not Knowing You’re One of Them?

What would you do if someone made a derogatory comment about Jews to your face—unaware that you were Jewish? Would you confront them? Correct them? Or… would you pause and reflect?

Recently, I found myself in exactly that situation. During a phone call with a potential client—someone I had never met—he casually shared his frustration about a deal gone wrong with a former partner. In his words, that man was a “cheating, lying Jew shark.”

It caught me off guard. I had options. I could have called out his antisemitism and ended the conversation then and there. I could have let anger guide my next words. But something in me said: wait. Think. What is the right response?

The Power of Collective Identity

We Jews are known for sticking together. It’s one of the reasons often cited for our outsized success despite our small numbers: a strong, interconnected community. There’s power in shared heritage. There’s strength in knowing you’re part of a people bound not just by ethnicity, but by story, struggle, and purpose.

Naturally, when one of our own is attacked—especially for being Jewish—it feels like a blow to us all. It triggers a visceral instinct to defend, to protect, to stand together.

So when I heard that slur, was it my duty to push back immediately, to draw the line in the sand? Maybe. But was that the only response? Or the most effective one?

Not Every Offense Is Pure Hatred

There’s an uncomfortable possibility we must be honest enough to consider: what if the man on the phone really was cheated? What if his anger, while expressed in ugly and unacceptable language, stemmed from real betrayal?

We all know that being Jewish does not make one immune to moral failure. We’ve seen headlines. We’ve seen quiet, inner-community reckonings. We know we have work to do—not just in defending the Jewish people externally, but in elevating our own standards from within.

This doesn’t excuse the comment. But it reframes the response.

Why Labeling Isn’t Helpful

In today’s climate, the word “antisemitism” carries tremendous weight—as it should. But that’s precisely why we must use it with care. When we call someone an antisemite, we’re not just describing their words—we’re judging their heart.

But what if that judgment is hasty?

To be clear: what this man said was offensive. His language was ugly, prejudiced, and harmful. But was he truly an antisemite? Did he harbor hatred for Jews as a people—or was he, in his hurt and anger, unfairly scapegoating a specific individual who happened to be Jewish?

There’s a difference. And that difference matters—not just for him, but for us.

Because when we rush to label, we risk shutting the door on something essential: the possibility of dialogue, of clarity, of growth. We may miss the chance to turn a moment of division into one of connection—to shift from accusation to understanding.

And more immediately, we risk escalation. We risk trading insult for insult, hurt for hurt. We replace dialogue with defensiveness, and miss the chance to de-escalate through dignity.

Jewish tradition teaches that “its ways are ways of pleasantness” (Mishlei 3:17). We are meant to be pursuers of peace, not just for ourselves, but in our interactions with the world. Sometimes peace requires strength. Sometimes it requires protest. But often, it simply requires grace.

A Lesson for Our Political Conversations

This same principle applies far beyond one-on-one interactions. We see it in political discourse—about America, about Israel, about Jewish life at large. Whether online or around the Shabbat table, we often hear views that challenge our deepest convictions. And our instinct is to respond not with curiosity, but with combat.

But what if we paused to really listen?

Perhaps someone advocating for Palestinian children is not doing so out of malice toward Israel, but earnestly because they care about children. Perhaps a critic of Israeli policy is not motivated by hatred of Jews, but by a moral conscience reacting to suffering—just as we would hope others would react to our own.

Why must we always assume hostility? Why conflate every criticism with antisemitism?

Of course, true antisemitism exists. And it must be named and confronted. But reflexively accusing others of bigotry when they speak from pain or principle doesn’t defend our values—it undermines them. It shuts down dialogue and hardens hearts. It makes reconciliation impossible.

Jewish tradition doesn’t ask us to be naïve. But it does ask us to be discerning. To seek justice, but also to dan l’chaf zechut—judge others favorably. To stand for emet, truth—but also for shalom, peace.

In Place of Darkness, Be Light

In that moment on the phone, I realized something: maybe my best response wasn’t outrage. Maybe it was example.

Instead of correcting him with words, I would respond with action. I would show him what it means to do business with a Jew—someone honest, scrupulous, and fair. Someone who doesn’t just follow the law, but exceeds it. Someone who honors the ethical core of our tradition even when it costs something.

Because the truth is: every bad act done in the name of Judaism desecrates it. And every good act done in its name sanctifies it.

So when someone desecrates our faith, our people, our name—perhaps the most powerful response isn’t retaliation. It’s to double down on who we really are. To respond to darkness with light. To remind the world, through our own integrity, what being a Jew truly means.

So What Did I Do?

I didn’t say anything in that moment—not because I was afraid, and not because I didn’t care. I stayed silent because I knew words wouldn’t change him—but behavior might.

From that point on, I went out of my way to treat this client with patience, honesty, and integrity. I didn’t just do the job—I exceeded expectations. I returned calls promptly, explained things clearly, and even went the extra mile to help him solve unrelated issues. I didn’t preach, and I didn’t posture. I simply conducted myself as I believe a Jew should—with emet and chesed, truth and kindness.

I don’t know if he ever realized I was Jewish. But I do know that by the time we finished working together, the tone had completely shifted. He thanked me repeatedly. He trusted me. He spoke with respect.

In that transformation, I saw something profound: that sometimes, the most powerful rebuttal to a slur is not indignation—it’s decency. Not silence, but sanctification.

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D. Tzvi Trenk is a New York–based attorney whose essays draw on Jewish tradition to explore contemporary moral questions with depth and nuance. 

I’ve spent my career in politics, public relations, and crisis management — guiding clients through intense scrutiny and reputational crisis. I’ve helped lead high-stakes political campaigns across the country. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s this: in a crisis, storytelling is everything. Words can be as powerful as weapons.

That’s why, as someone who deeply supports Israel, I’ve been disheartened —  not by Israel’s military response, which was necessary — but by how poorly the war has been communicated, allowing Hamas to control the narrative from the start. 

Two recent New York Times columns debated whether Israel is committing genocide. Legal scholars are weighing in. But that’s exactly the trap. It’s not about legal definitions — it’s psychological warfare. Hamas doesn’t need to win militarily. They win if the world forgets Oct. 7 and starts arguing about genocide.

And Israel let that happen.

Instead of leading with moral clarity and strategic communication, Israel surrendered the narrative—and Hamas filled the vacuum with lies and blood-soaked propaganda. Oct. 7 was a military and intelligence failure. Oct. 8 was something more enduring: a communications collapse that still haunts Israel — and Jews around the world.

Instead of leading with moral clarity and strategic communication, Israel surrendered the narrative — and Hamas filled the vacuum with lies and blood-soaked propaganda. 

After Hamas’ unspeakable massacre — the rape of women, the burning of families, the kidnapping of babies — there was a moment of global clarity. Even Israel’s harshest critics fell silent.

But that moment vanished almost instantly. As the documentary “October 8” points out, highly coordinated campus protests erupted within hours — not in response to Israeli military action, but in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ atrocities. Social media lit the match. Slogans like “From the river to the sea” became viral weapons.

Jewish students — some simply wearing a Star of David — were harassed before a single Israeli airstrike. The narrative flipped with terrifying speed: Israel was no longer the victim of terror, but the oppressor of an occupied people. Terms like “apartheid,” “colonizer” and “genocide” replaced law, fact and context. 

Hamas’ strategy was clear. It diverted international aid away from hospitals and schools into the terrorist organization’s vast underground tunnel empire. It launched rockets from residential neighborhoods. It stored weapons in mosques and kindergartens. It placed command centers beneath hospitals. Hamas built bunkers for fighters, not shelters for civilians. And it knew how the world would react when the IDF was forced to cut through civilians to get to the Hamas terrorists and their innocent Israeli captives.

Israel should have exposed this. Instead, it reinforced the perception. Rather than visibly taking control of humanitarian efforts, it issued evacuation orders with no plan for optics. Israel allowed the world to see only suffering — not the strategy behind it.

This is where rhetoric matters as much as rockets. The best wartime leaders are both bold and reluctant — bold in resolve, reluctant in tone. Think of FDR on Dec. 8, 1941: resolute, but not bloodthirsty. Imagine if Netanyahu had said, “No soldier wants to attack a city. But Hamas put us in this position.” That’s how you frame strength with empathy.

Instead, Netanyahu led with defiance. And Hamas — the world’s most cynical storytellers — filled the void with grief and rage.

Israel has recently taken steps to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. That’s a start. But it’s not just about getting trucks through a checkpoint. It’s about showing the world that Israel leads not only in warfighting but in decency. Humanitarian gestures matter more when they’re seen, not just announced.

Even though no wartime military in history has ever provided aid to the enemy it was concurrently fighting, Israel could have established safe zones from the beginning and not left this in the hands of Egypt or the U.N. Let the world see Israeli soldiers carrying food and water, not just rifles. Own the humanitarian narrative and expose the tunnels. Show, don’t just tell. 

In today’s world, legitimacy isn’t a luxury — it’s a weapon. And Israel gave it up far too easily.

Instead of defining the story, Israel let Hamas provoke a global argument over genocide. As Ezra Klein recently wrote in The New York Times, the deeper fracture isn’t just between Israel and the world — it’s within the Jewish community itself.

This isn’t just a professional critique. It’s a personal cry.

As a Jewish father and son, I see the images of starving children in Gaza and feel deep sorrow. Not because I believe Hamas is blameless — they’re not. They are monsters. But because in those emaciated frames, I see echoes of our past. The ghosts of our ancestors. The children who didn’t survive.

When we see such suffering and don’t ask what more we could have done to prevent or reduce it, we lose something deeper than a news cycle. We lose a piece of our Jewishness. Of our moral inheritance.

Pirkei Avot asks: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?”

This war has tested that balance. And too often, we’re failing the second half.

This isn’t just a PR crisis. It’s a Jewish one. And it demands moral leadership — not just military might.

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John Shallman is an award-winning political media consultant and crisis management expert and President of Shallman Communications in Los Angeles. Mr. Shallman is the author of the national best-selling book, “Return from Siberia.”

The thoughts and feelings that arise for you as you look at this photo of Evyatar David will tell you a lot about yourself.

They may make you want to look away. I don’t blame you.

They may provoke a reflexive response: “Yes, this is awful—but what about the (name your figure) of Palestinians killed since October 7?” You may feel compelled to “balance” your grief, to start thinking like an accountant, as if all numbers are morally equivalent—as if all integers are the same, even those that include Hamas fighters.

You may feel, as many now do, that Evyatar somehow deserves his fate—that Hamas, as the self-appointed voice of oppressed peoples everywhere, has done the world a kind of moral good.

Or perhaps you’ll retreat into the moral cowardice of abstraction: “All war is wrong. All killing is immoral.”

You may not feel anything. That’s understandable too. We all have lives—deadlines, dishes to wash, birthdays to remember. And grief, especially grief that doesn’t immediately belong to us, is hard to hold.

I can only say what this photo makes me feel.

It makes me feel like the world has gone insane.

Evyatar David is twenty-three. He had just finished his military service when, on October 7, he went to the Nova music festival—a peace festival near the Gaza border. A celebration of joy, music, and coexistence. He’s an artist, a dancer, by all accounts a gentle soul.

That’s where they took him. That’s where Hamas came storming in—on paragliders, pickup trucks, and motorcycles—and began executing young people one by one. Some were shot while hiding. Some were raped and tortured before being killed. Some were burned alive.

Evyatar was dragged into Gaza. His family had no word from him for over a year—until Hamas released a propaganda video this August, showing his emaciated form and the horror he endures. In the footage, he is forced to dig what he believes is his own grave. His parents approved the release of the clip, hoping the world would wake up to the barbarity of what is happening.

And the world?

The world has responded by… wait for it—threatening Israel.

France, England, Australia, among others, are now pressuring Israel to accept a Palestinian state in the middle of a hostage crisis, thereby rewarding Hamas before the hostages, including Evyatar, are even accounted for. What incentive, then, does Hamas have to release them?

What message does the world send when hostage-taking leads to international recognition?

And no, the Palestinian Authority is not a viable alternative. In Gaza, it has no presence. The last time it held power there, in 2007, its members were thrown from rooftops by Hamas. In the West Bank, it’s corrupt and feeble. The fantasy that the PA could replace Hamas is just that—a fantasy designed to appease Western consciences.

This is what undoes me: not just the cruelty of Hamas, but the moral collapse of the world that now strengthens Hamas, feeds it, praises it, and amplifies its lies.

Much of the world has aligned—overtly or tacitly—with actual genocidal actors. That is not hyperbole. Hamas is not a resistance movement. It is a terror regime that wouldn’t hesitate to throw you off a rooftop if you were gay. It would take your rainbow flag, your liberal ideals, your open-minded slogans—and vanish you without a trace. There are no pride marches in Gaza. There are no human rights commissions in Hamas tunnels.

Do you know what Israel has done in this war—what no other army in modern history has attempted?

• It has dropped leaflets, made phone calls, and sent text messages urging civilians to flee before airstrikes—sacrificing military advantage in an effort to preserve the lives of Gazans, while endangering the lives of its own sons and daughters—many of whom have been killed or maimed in the process.

• It has paused fighting to allow humanitarian corridors to open, and coordinated with enemy-aligned organizations to deliver aid.

• It has provided food, fuel, electricity, and clean water to Gaza—often knowing that Hamas would steal and resell it.

• It has allowed polio vaccines, incubators, and medical equipment into enemy territory—while Hamas hoards medicine and blocks civilians from evacuating.

• It created an interactive map to help civilians avoid combat zones. It operates a humanitarian hotline. It warns. It waits.

And still, Israel is portrayed as the genocidal aggressor.

Yes, mistakes have been made. Some of them grievous. But to equate those mistakes with the deliberate, gleeful atrocities of Hamas is not “balance”—it’s moral collapse.

Yes, mistakes have been made. Some of them grievous. But to equate those mistakes with the deliberate, gleeful atrocities of Hamas is not “balance”—it’s moral collapse.

Hamas hides in tunnels and behind children. It stores rockets in schools and mosques. It builds its command centers under hospitals. Then it films the aftermath, and the world shares the footage stripped of context, stripped of truth, stripped of who began this war and how.

And that’s the horror of this photo of Evyatar—not just what it shows, but what it reveals.

It shows you someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s friend—taken from a festival of peace, dragged into a tunnel by men who vowed to kill Jews wherever they may be.

And it reveals the people—people I’ve worked with, people I once trusted—who now offer Hamas their sympathy, their platforms, their diplomacy. It doesn’t matter if it’s explicit or not. At this point, succor is succor.

It’s as if the Earth itself is slipping off its axis. Like the gravitational laws that once governed human decency have been suspended. Like we are floating toward a place where nothing means anything—where murderers are heroes and those risking their lives to save victims are erased.

Look at this photo once more.

Then look inward.

Ask yourself what you feel. And what you believe.

Because this isn’t just about Israel. This is about whether humanity is still capable of distinguishing good from evil. Whether ethics can still survive political fashion.

Whether, when given the chance, you looked—and whether you saw what I saw.

May all the kidnaped victims return home, may all the innocents be made safe and free, and may we soon enter an era of true peace —far from a mere cessation of war.

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Peter Himmelman is a Grammy and Emmy nominated performer, songwriter, film composer, visual artist and award-winning author. 

“I haven’t eaten for days,” the shaggy-haired, bearded young man says. “Every day my body becomes weaker.” His arms, his legs look like twigs. Every rib, the line of his scapula protrude in his shirtless torso. He is standing in a dark narrow tunnel, gripping a shovel, and he begins digging in the dirt. “What I’m doing now is digging my own grave,” he explains, before sinking to the ground to cry.

This is Evyatar David, a talented guitarist from a musical family, kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 from the Nova music festival. Hamas released this video of him a few days ago. At one point, Evyatar’s captor offers him a can to drink. Only the captor’s arm is seen, but that man’s arm is entirely unlike the hostage’s. The captor’s arm is that of a man who is clearly strong and well-fed. He presents the other man this drink, in a grotesque pantomime of kindness.

In a remotely moral universe, there would be an explosion of outrage against the man deliberately starving his captive and forcing him to dig his own grave. And yet here we are. So confident is Hamas of the world’s continued sympathy, they have released proof of their own depravity, knowing it will be seized on to indict not them, but Israel.

We are witnessing the triumph of starvation porn. One side in Gaza flaunts the emaciated body of the Jew it is torturing underground, while the other side, the Jews, are condemned as monstrous starvers of innocents. 

I don’t doubt that the Israeli government has made mistakes in its war in Gaza. No government could possibly prosecute a war in a dense urban environment, against terrorists who hide behind their own people, without making any mistakes. As Haviv Rettig Gur explained recently in The Free Press, Israel miscalculated when they cut off aid to Gaza in March. They didn’t do that out of cruelty, but because they’d brought hundreds of thousands of tons of aid into Gaza during the ceasefire from January to March and thought there was enough food there to last six months. They basically played chicken with Hamas, expecting the group to start releasing hostages in order for aid to resume.

But the food ran out sooner than expected, presumably because Hamas and other Gazans had stockpiled it, and the idea of using aid as pressure on Hamas had a fatal misunderstanding at its very core. “Why would Hamas blink first?” Gur asks. “Has the Israeli government met Hamas?” As food began running scarce, or could plausibly be said to be running scarce, Hamas saw a brilliant opportunity. They howled that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza, and their stenographers in the U.N. and Western media ran with it.

It’s hard to sort fact from fiction where Gaza is concerned, but it seems hunger is increasing. There’s reason to wonder how pervasive or severe it is, however — from the earliest days of the war, Israel’s critics have claimed Gaza is in the grip of widespread starvation or even famine. So maybe it wasn’t true then, but it is now? If Gaza is full of skin-and-bones children, it seems odd that the photographs purporting to show them — the horrifying images that have been splashed across social media and on newspaper front pages these past few weeks — have invariably turned out to be from places like Yemen, or actually show a child suffering from a terrible wasting disease. 

Yet Israel’s defenders don’t generally like taking potshots at the starvation claims, because it’s all too easy for their opponents to say they are heartless, and they don’t want to think of themselves that way. Palestinian civilians shouldn’t need to become walking skeletons — like Evyatar David — to be worthy of sympathy. Being unable to access food should be enough. Even though no country in history, ever, has been expected to feed the population it’s at war with, hearts rightly soften when innocents suffer. Kind-hearted Jews and others who defend Israel long to curtail this suffering, so long as it doesn’t hinder the war effort.

Except achieving this isn’t so simple. Huge quantities of donated food have streamed into Gaza, but Hamas has been stealing it to keep themselves in power. Two months ago the U.S.-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation came in to circumvent this problem, but from the beginning Hamas sabotaged and attacked them. After stoking violence near the distribution centers, Hamas claimed again and again that Israel fired at starving Palestinians, and the Western media went into overdrive to spread their accusations around the world.

If Hamas cared about Palestinian suffering, they would give up the hostages they’re holding and surrender. They don’t do that because every dead or ailing Palestinian is a public relations bonanza for them. They know that although they are losing the military war, they are winning the global disinformation war. This was underlined recently by France, the U.K. and Canada, which pledged that they will recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September. Britain’s Keir Starmer stated that their recognition will come if there is no ceasefire by then – juicy inducement for Hamas to do anything but release the hostages and agree to a ceasefire, and just hold on until September, when well-heeled Westerners will reward the Palestinians with the promise of a state. It is obscene. 

Hamas actually wants Palestinians to die — or at least, more to the point, to be seen dying. This is another thing good-hearted people hesitate to say, because it sounds like demonizing Arabs. No one, people think, could be so monstrous. Decent people are rightly suspicious of wartime attempts to whip up emotion against the enemy. And yet the evidence is there. The Hamas leadership has demonstrated enough concern for themselves to live in luxury with stolen money, but Palestinian lives are expendable. Gazans are deemed valuable only insofar as Hamas can sacrifice them in pursuit of their obsession to destroy the Jewish state. They want to kill Jews, and are indifferent to Palestinian life.

Sometimes the enemy really is that evil. The Jews should know this better than anyone. And throughout history, when the world feels the need to name a certain group of people as inhuman, they have selected the Jews. Eighty years after the Holocaust, that terrifying script is playing out again, as voices rise around the world to condemn the Jews as killers of babies, the contagion that must be eliminated.

Now they accuse Israel of starving Palestinian children even as they starve the hostages, and their blood libel is broadcast by lying liars who lie. Meanwhile Evyatan David remains in the dark, steps from the grave he was ordered to dig for himself. And the world is silent.

Absolutely everything about the dismal situation in Gaza is Hamas’ fault. Israel’s flaws and missteps don’t begin to compare with what Hamas has done deliberately, cynically, hoping to bring about the maximum number of deaths of not only Israelis, but their own people. They started this war by carrying out the most horrific slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, they refuse to give up the 50 hostages, dead and alive, they still hold, and they’ve ensured that Palestinian civilians will die, no matter how careful Israel is, by placing themselves and their weapons under schools, hospitals and homes. Now they accuse Israel of starving Palestinian children even as they starve the hostages, and their blood libel is broadcast by lying liars who lie. 

Meanwhile Evyatan David remains in the dark, steps from the grave he was ordered to dig for himself. And the world is silent.

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Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”