By Bill Simons

The Reporter recently published a letter by Rhonda Levine and Arieh Ullmann notable for its eloquent passion and urgency. Undeterred by accusations of disloyalty, Levine and Ullmann exhort American Jews to confront the carnage in Gaza, as well as West Bank expansionism. They place blame on Israeli state actions. While affirming their alarm, other vantage points render alternative options. 
Hyperbole and misrepresentation are not absent in media commentary concerning Israel’s campaign against Hamas. Unfair criticism against Israel is part of the mix. Compare reaction against Israel to that directed toward the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Approximately 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and more than 250 taken hostage. Video shows that starvation has reduced Israeli Evyatar David, a Hamas hostage, to a barely living skeleton. Israeli retaliation has led to more than 60,000 Palestinian deaths, largely of civilians. In contrast, Vladimir Putin launched a brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine that has resulted in an estimated 1.5 million combined Russian-Ukrainian casualties, far more than in the Hamas-Israel conflict. 
Yet, global outrage in academia, media and governments against Russia pales before that directed against Israel. “Genocide” and “holocaust” figure prominently in the language of opprobrium aimed at Israel. On its front page, The New York Times published a heart-rendering photograph of Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, an emaciated 18-month-old Palestinian boy, with a protruding spine, dying from malnutrition. Then, questions arose as to why the boy’s mother and siblings, also shown in the photo, looked adequately fed. Forced to print a retraction, the Times subsequently acknowledged that Mohammed was a victim of a genetic disorder, not starvation. 
The preceding is true, but cannot rationalize Israeli tactics that have grown increasingly disproportionate, lethal and brutal. Attainment of self-defense and security is justifiable. Creating conditions in Gaza that inflict hunger and starvation on a civilian population, kill aid workers and indiscriminately deploy armaments that decimate non-combatants are not. Nor is land-grab vigilantism on the West Bank acceptable. Claiming that criticism of his policies is akin to the venerable and pernicious blood libel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu terms credible documentation of Gaza hunger a “global campaign of lies.” 
Evidence mounts that Netanyahu plans to render conditions in Gaza so unbearable that Palestinians will “voluntarily” accept resettlement. There are reports that Netanyahu has discussed with the leaders of South Sudan a reciprocal agreement, admission of large numbers of Gaza refugees in return for economic and diplomatic benefits. The South Sudan is populated by indigenous African Christians. Forced exile of Muslim Arabs to a turbulent region governed by a people foreign to them would violate Muslim, Christian and Jewish ethics. 
Tisha B’Av compels Jews to remember and reflect on our own history of sorrows. The solemn holiday is certainly not an encouragement to inflict miseries on others. The calamities of Babylonian exile, diaspora following Roman conquest, expulsion from European countries, ghettoization, pogroms, Shoah and fanatical cries to drive modern Israel into the sea elicit an implacable “Never Again” resolve. To retain Jewish morality, it is imperative that we not perpetrate such tragedy on innocents. 
Initially a just war of preservation against Hamas terrorists, the Israeli campaign has devolved into an operation to militarily subjugate Gaza and its people. It is not the type of war that David Ben-Gurion and the founding generation conducted to re-establish a Jewish homeland in 1948, or that Levi Eshkol with Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and a rising generation of sabras waged in 1967 to preserve Eretz Israel, or that Golda Meir led to ensure the survival of the Jewish state in 1973. 
The misguided trajectory of the Hamas-Israel War has diminished the moral and international standing of the Jewish homeland. Subject to stipulations, France and other nations now contemplate granting formal recognition to a Palestinian state. Large protest rallies against Israeli actions in Gaza mount in Western nations, amongst them the United States, as well as in Israel itself, where public demonstration against the Netanyahu regime commenced even before the war, triggered by his attempts to enervate the authority of the judiciary. From pulpits and the streets, numbers of rabbis condemn the suffering in Gaza.
In America, key elements in the Democratic Party have withdrawn support from Netanyahu. Tellingly a critic of Israel, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary endorsement in the upcoming New York mayoral election; this in the Diaspora’s most Jewish city. A light sleeper, American antisemitism has ratcheted up to levels not seen since World War II. The next U.S. president may discontinue the largess of weapons, military intelligence and diplomatic support essential to Israel’s security. Nor is it a given that substantial financial contributions by Diaspora Jews will continue at customary levels.
Elements in the Arab world that appeared ready to work toward normalization of relations with Israel have changed course to condemn Netanyahu’s evolving territorial ambitions. The decisive Israeli campaigns against Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi terrorists, along with the humbling of their Iranian paymaster, were strategically imperative, but those against Gaza civilians are not. Criticism of Israeli policies under Netanyahu is neither anti-Zionist nor antisemitic. 
Judaism provides a moral compass from which Netanyahu has strayed. Netanyahu’s right-wing ultra-Orthodox coalition constitutes an Israeli equivalent to the Christian nationalist version of America that President Donald Trump espouses. Israel and the United States are great nations, defined by noble founding principles and proud histories. Today, however, the two nations suffer under imperious and aggrandizing leadership. 
Israel needs to articulate a clear vision for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. Eradication of Hamas, return of hostages, security and a just peace are attainable and compatible goals. The post-World War II rehabilitation of a defeated Germany offers a model. Third Reich leaders were punished and denazification proceeded. Victorious Allies rebuilt Western Europe and Germany. Within a decade, a prosperous and democratic West Germany emerged as a Cold War ally and NATO member. Emulating the German model, an independent Palestinian state, comprised of Gaza and part of the West Bank, could emerge after a period of occupation. 
As an American Jew uneasy about Israeli policy in Gaza and President Trump’s proposal to turn the rubble into a resort, I think back to a parasha commentary that Alan Levine, my old college roommate, shared: “There are no monasteries in Judaism. We cannot hide ourselves away from temptation. We can only utilize our will power to resist it.”