June 24, 2026

I recently attended an event for StandStrong, a Jewish organization that empowers communities to be confident, safe, and proud of their identity through self-defense. This class was led by MMA fighter Natan Levy. While I was talking to him about protecting myself, he told me that it is very important to always keep myself calm and my body balanced.

This summer, we will read Parsha VaEthanan, where we are retold the Ten Commandments, which are a great example of balance. The first four commandments focus on our relationship with G-d, and the last six help us build better relationships with other people. The lesson here is that we need a balance between spirituality and interpersonal relationships.

I understand that conversations at Shabbat meals revolve around the state of the world, but they should also include laughter and Torah.

Jonathan Haidt wrote the book, “The Anxious Generation.” He believes that children in this generation are becoming increasingly anxious due to social media. While I am sure that social media isn’t helping Jewish children nowadays, they are going to be anxious without social media. They can feel the fear in their parents, grandparents, and teachers’ voices. It’s important to give children balance by making Shabbat meals and synagogue fun. After services, let the children run around and have fun. Let them have a balance to this unbalanced time.

It is very hard to stay calm in these times, but I do believe the best way to do so is through balance. We can consume information without it consuming us. We can look at social media after we move our bodies and see the sun in the morning.

Maimonides said, “If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.” (The Guide for the Perplexed, Chapter 32)

We all want to be educated on the important issues concerning Jewish people. However, reading and listening to more information doesn’t  always make us more educated. It can cause us to only absorb information that has a singular slant and increase our anxiety.

Carmel Gat was one of the six beautiful souls who were found murdered in a Hamas terror tunnel. Eleven months before her death, Carmel had just returned from a trip to India, where she had been practicing meditation and yoga for months. After a long trip, she went to stay with her parents for Simchat Torah, as every Jewish girl would. From her parents’ home, she was taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, while her mother was murdered. A nightmare for any person, and Carmel was still able to help others.

According to the hostages who were released a couple of months after Oct. 7, Carmel used mindfulness techniques to help other hostages cope with the horrific situation they were in. She would teach people yoga or use occupational therapy techniques to help children while they were held captive. She was keeping herself calm and balanced in the most difficult situation possible.

I hope and pray we are never in another situation like the one Carmel was in. I don’t know how she managed to maintain such a balance, but from her we should learn to seek it in difficult situations.

Natan Levy was teaching me self-defense. He helped me with the correct stance and movements so I can feel confident and protected. While I find all of this useful, I feel like I left the class really focused on maintaining my physical and emotional balance for myself and my family. I know we all need to keep both feet planted, look forward and stay calm and balanced for our future. 

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Dana Fine is an acupuncturist in the Chicago suburbs. She is also the author of the Children’s book “Finding Balance.”

Some would think that Hamas has failed in what it supposedly intended by its surprise murderous terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.  Hamas said they wished to anchor a force teamed with other Iranian-backed militias – Hezbollah, Houthis and Syrian gangs – supported by Iran itself to permanently destroy Israel and take over the region “from the river to the sea.” They may not have reached that goal, but did they accomplish another goal just as destructive to Israel’s future?

It did not take long for the Israel haters to turn on Israel for defending itself against the many attacks by the Iranian surrogates.  We would expect supporters of Israel to step up and defend its right to self-defense.  Israel was under attack from the day they vacated Gaza and turned it over to the residents for self-rule in 2005.  The Israel detractors forget the “innocent” Palestinians voted to put in charge the group called “Hamas” whose reason to exist is annihilating the Jewish state.

The laundry list of Jew-hating organizations continued their lines of attack. It is the quasi-supportive groups that are changing this dynamic. The Democratic Party was formerly solidly in support of Israel, but no longer.  They hide behind the claim they don’t like the government headed by Bibi Netanyahu.  Would any other government act differently with terrorism against their citizens?

Is it possible they have succeeded in turning one principal American political party against Israel? In April, 40 of 47 Democratic senators voted to block arms to Israel led by 10 Jewish senators. When elected Jews are voting to disarm Israel, you can argue Hamas has a major win by dividing Israel’s closest ally. 

They receive cover from groups like J Street, ostensibly a Jewish supporter of Israel.  They recently issued a statement that counters the vote to stop arms sales to Israel, claiming it does more harm than good.  They stated: “J Street continues to believe that joint cooperative tech programs must have proper guardrails similar to those for the sales of weapons to ensure weapons provided are used in a manner consistent with U.S. law, international law and U.S. policy goals.”  They assert again that Israel needs to follow U.S. laws, implying they haven’t been for the past 50-plus years. Adding that “Israel should be in compliance with international law” smacks of discrimination, since every international body (starting with the United Nations) harbors deep antagonism towards Israel and Jews. 

This is evidenced by William Galston’s column in The Wall Street Journal, “Netanyahu Has Lost Middle America.” Galston comes from the “nonpartisan” Brookings Institute but has a long history of affiliation with Democratic administrations. He cites that 61% of Americans believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. 

That is no surprise when they hear a constant drumbeat of lies about supposed Israeli government activities like withholding food supplies from Gazans despite ample photo evidence of well-fed Gazans. The recent blood libel in The New York Times perpetrated by Nicholas Kristof stating Israelis forced Palestinian prisoners into sex with dogs has been proven impossible by animal experts.

Israel will apparently be having elections this fall.  I have advocated for a change in the top leadership because of my adherence to the George Washington principle that people should step aside in a democracy as no leader is or should be indispensable. Yet, I don’t envision a sea change from the Democrats and their cohorts in the press. 

Unless Israel simply stops defending itself, the people who blame Netanyahu will argue against the next government as well — as if the Palestinian people controlled by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran will abandon their desire to destroy the Jewish homeland. 

Maybe the American people will see that the false information for which they have fallen since Oct. 7 is just using Netanyahu as a straw man. In the meantime, the Hamas supporters have managed at least for now to turn American elected officials and a large portion of the American population against one of its foremost allies.  We may conclude that although Hamas lost the war, they will have won the peace.

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Bruce L. Bialosky is a former presidential appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

The most important Democratic surrogate in this fall’s midterm elections will be Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now that the United States’ war with Iran may be almost partially and possibly somewhat concluded, Donald Trump has a strong vested interest in convincing the American people that the economic troubles that have dogged his second term in office are about to become a thing of the past. He admitted as much last week in a news conference on the sidelines of the G7 summit, when he identified the primary motivation for his almost complete capitulation to Iran as a way of ending the violence between the two countries that has cratered the global economy, devastated Trump’s own approval ratings and diminished Republicans’ chances to hold their majorities in Congress this November.

“I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover”, the president told an international assemblage of reporters, making it clear that he needed to avoid the continuing economic difficulties caused by the war as the U.S. midterm elections draw closer.

The spike in gasoline prices after the war began and the strait closed had unsettled American consumers and frightened Republican politicians. While Trump insisted a few weeks ago that he did not care about the midterms, his intervention in GOP primaries and his frequent references to the likelihood of a third impeachment if Democrats retake congressional majorities suggested that domestic political considerations are a major concern for him.

After the ceasefire was announced, gasoline prices quickly dropped and the stock market rose just as quickly. The president and his allies quickly trumpeted the economic gains, but there has been considerable evidence over the last several days that the peace with Iran is precarious at best and that both renewed violence and accompanying economic pain could return at any time. Iran’s leaders know this: they have been carefully watching gas and food prices and midterm election polls since the war began and Trump’s economic and political vulnerability have given them the confidence to withstand the brutal American and Israeli airstrikes they have been suffering. They are just as secure in their beliefs that Trump’s domestic challenges will prevent him from restarting the war and just as assured that there is almost nothing they can do that would force a military response from him. The Revolutionary Guard now has an almost unlimited free hand and they know it.

Now that Trump has proclaimed an overwhelming victory, he will hope that decreased inflation will be of more tangible importance to the American people than the somewhat abstract damage of international embarrassment. That will require a not insignificant percentage of voters to believe his assertion that the United States did achieve its goals in the Middle East and that the “unconditional surrender” he promised at the beginning of the war was achieved by him and not Iran.

There are numerous obstacles that will make it difficult for the president and his allies to successfully make that case, including furious Republican officeholders, invigorated Democratic candidates and skeptical swing voters. But it is already clear that Trump’s biggest headache will be Netanyahu, his erstwhile ally who now recognizes that continued loyalty to the American leader would cost him his own reelection this fall.

While Americans have the luxury of pretending that Iran did not dramatically enhance its economic and military power as a result of Trump’s decision to essentially forfeit the war, Israelis face a more unavoidable reality. They are violently reminded on a daily, if not hourly basis, of Iran’s renewed aggressiveness. Netanyahu cannot retreat from his war with Hezbollah: it would endanger both his own reelection chances and the continued existence of his country. By maintaining Israel’s armed presence in Lebanon and ordering direct military action against Iran’s terrorist clients, Netanyahu will frequently be reminding American voters of the hollowness of Trump’s claims.

Trump knows this, which is why he and his vice president have so sharpened their criticism of Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. They cannot afford for Israel to prolong the war. But Israel cannot afford to end it. Neither can Bibi.

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Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com