(Photo by Steve Villano, taken in Assisi, Italy, birthplace of St. Francis (1181-1226) and a major Catholic pilgrimage site.)
100 years ago, when the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, when hooded-haters marched through the streets of Washington, DC, cloaked in their white sheets, 50,000 strong, and wrote the Xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Asian, anti-Italian Immigration Act of 1924, they despised Catholics as much as they hated all non-Christians and and non-Whites.
Messianic Nationalist & violent Christians who dominated the Klan, crusaded against the 1928 Presidential Candidacy of NYS Governor Al Smith, the first Catholic candidate to run for President. Their campaign against Smith was vile, and its very viscousness and vituperative attacks upon people of one specific faith, set the stage for Adolf Hitler’s genocidal attacks against the Jews just a few years laters. In fact, Hitler and Nazi lawyers in the 1930’s acknowledged that it was American Jim Crow laws in some 30 States—crafted by the KKK against Black people—which were their model for the discriminatory Nuremberg Laws against Jews.
Fast forward to today, when the KKK-hatched Immigration Act of 1924 is still the Bible for Stephen Miller and modern-day American Nazis, and when the first Secretary of Defense (or War) in 250 years of US History has held Messianic, Nationalist Christian prayer services on Federal, tax-payer paid for land, at the Department Defense (or War), and pointedly excluded Catholics–carrying forward the KKK’s continuing hatred of 1.3 billion fellow Christians.
At the same time, few Popes of the world’s 1.3 BILLION Cathollcs have been as Progressive and devout followers of the universal teachings of love–and the humanitarian actions–of Jesus Christ as the last two, Pope Francis, and Pope Leo–both of whom have been insanely vilified by Far Right Messianic Nationalist Christians, in the US and abroad.
Pope Leo has directly challenged the crimes vs. humanity committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza, and aimed at Christians & Muslims in Lebanon, and has strongly opposed the US/Israel War in Iran. He has directly chastised Trump, US Secretary of Defense (War)Pete Hegseth, and other Messianic, Nationalist, KKK-Christians for justifying the War as a Holy War of Christians & Jews vs. Muslims–and praying to their God to “kill” some of God’s own children. Whose God would sanction such slaughter?
What could possibly go wrong when Messianic, Nationalist and Violent Kahanist Jews, team up with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent KKK-loving Christians and go to war with Messianic, Nationalist, Violent Muslims?
Pope Leo has been fearless & relentless in exposing and criticizing this insanity and perversion of religion, and in making clear that the Christ he follows in his acts of humanity, kindness and compassion, must never be used as justification for War and/or Mass Murder.
It’s why Hegseth, and his fraudulent , Nationalist, Far Right KKK-Christians are waging their Jihad against anyone who actually follows the teachings–and actions–of Christ, and has intentionally excluded Catholics from prayer breakfasts–even on Good Friday.
Tomorrow, on Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Christian Calendar, maybe the KKK-Christian Nationalists will see a glimmer of the Light. I doubt it, since their violent hatred–especially of Catholics going back more than acentury, or of humane members of any faith who disagree with them–thrives in darkness, feeding upon itself and the corpses of others.
Easter Sunday may be a celebration of rebirth and Resurrection for devout Catholics and other Christians, but for the ultra-nationalist, Messianic KKK-Christians, it’s simply another day in their continuing crusade to crucify anyone different, who honors love ahead of hate, or peace ahead of war.
For millions of us Jews around the world, this may be the most stressful Passover of our lives, since we are praying for the freedom & dignity of our fellow human beings Israel is oppressing.
Each Passover, over the past dozen years or so, I’ve written an original Haggadah for my granddaughters, emphasizing freedom, equality and humanity above all.
Each year during their lifetimes, as the Extreme Right Wing Fanatical government of Benjamin Netanyahu has jettisoned the beauty and universality of Judaism in favor of a narrow-minded nationalism that demonizes and destroys non-Jews, the challenge to tell the story has become more acute.
The first Haggadah I wrote was when our oldest granddaughter, now nearly 17, was almost 4 years old, and her younger sister was 2. Their youngest sister would be born in 2015.
I decided to write my own Haggadahs for my granddaughters since I found all pre-published Passover stories for children to be harsh, foreboding and sadly lacking in even the barest attempt to capture the attention and imagination of young children, without talking down to them. I scoured Jewish bookstores, on-line offerings, and even Jewish museums. Bupkus. Everywhere I turned: Bupkus.
I tried adjusting the standard Passover story with a few flourishes, but it just didn’t work. I wanted my granddaughters to feel the same passion for the story of freedom against all odds that I felt, as a convert to Judaism, and to absorb such lessons of humanity and Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) into their lives.
I agreed with the social commentary of Jon Stewart at the time, himself a Jew, that we Jews were utter failures when it came to “marketing” our own holidays for our children and grandchildren. We had to be more creative to compete with a plethora of presents under a glittering Christmas tree, or oodles of colored eggs to emphasize Easter—a masterful sales pitch for Christians to sell death, rebirth and resurrection.
Everyone of our holidays, it seemed—Passover, Purim, Hanukkah—revolved around fighting for survival and killing others to gain our freedom from oppression, from Pharaohs, or Hamens or other demented dictators, who hated us simply because we were not like them. The story of Jewish history, was not only one of resilience in the face of such constant threats, but the constant challenge and struggle to continue to exist.
The challenge, and struggle, I did not see coming, was how to tell the story to my granddaughters now, when we Jews had become the oppressors of others, and the anti-democratic totalitarians advancing nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, or ever worse, ethnic and religious Genocide. What if we became our own worst nightmares?
Each year, I paid close attention to what was of greatest interest to my granddaughters, and wrote and enacted a personalized Passover story true to Jewish history, yet tailored to their young interests to make it even more riveting for them: Faery princesses, or Shopkins, or She-roes (from a TV show), or Cats, or, Puppy Pals. More recently, with the active and delightful participation of our youngest granddaughter—who declared our Passover “puppet-shows” to be her favorite holiday—we’ve added such new favorite themes like “Axolotls” in 2024, and “Rainbows” in 2025.
Those newer themes were a relief for me— coming in the two years after the October 7, 2023, mass murder of 1200 Jews by Hamas, and Israel’s extremely disproportionate counter-attack upon Gaza, which has grown into the Genocide of tens of thousands of non-combatant Palestinians—including some 20,000 infants and children.
In addition to being of great interest to our youngest granddaughter, now 10, those themes carried the blessed benefit of being able to focus on the remarkable “regenerative” powers of the Axolotl to overcome certain death, and on the resilience, diversity and humanity, represented by Rainbows, and not on the monstrous morphing of the Israeli government and armed forces into becoming, themselves, the awful oppressors we have battled throughout our history. We had become our own Amalek, the essence of all evil. How would I explain that twist in the Passover story to a 10-year old who loves the holiday—and whose loved for it I helped nurture—and whom I adore?
What makes the struggle even more wrenching this year—5786 in the Judaic Calendar, or some 5709 years before the creation of the State of Israel—is that the governments of both Israel and the United States have gone stark-raving mad. They’ve abandoned democracy and any semblance of respect for international law or any law; justify the slaughter of innocent non-combatants, in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon as “pre-emptive self-defense;” violate state sovereignty by reducing to rubble every part of any country they want to conquer; and commit campaigns of political assassination and abduction of world leaders they consider to be in their way.
Such paranoia can be used to justify the slaughter of anyone perceived to be different—precisely the kind of paranoia present in every Passover story, and used, throughout history against us Jews and of civilization. Only now, the Pharoahs are Jewish and American, and the targets of their state-sponsored violence and aggression are everyone else who is not, or who does not bend to their will. The symbolic Red Sea has become the Mediterranean, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Litani River in Lebanon.
Our 17-year old granddaughter is fully aware of this enormous gash in the universe, which has tipped our earth out of orbit, creating a new axis of evil, and a new level of inhumanity toward others. Her questions are acute, and reflected by the Jewish Voice for Peace:
“Why is this Passover different from other Passovers?: Genocide. The unique scale, and devastating brutality is still being measured; the dead are still being counted, while the death toll continuously climbs. At this very moment. Israel is dropping bombs on Iran, on Tehran, on Lebanon, on Beirut; while Palestinians in Gaza try to retrace their spiraling Exodus back to what? As we, Jews of conscience, try to go retrace our spiralling back to ritual, back to Passover, back to what?
We ignore those questions of this new generation of Jews, of exquisitely sensitive human beings, at our own peril. War is peace; lies are truth; the inhumane is humane. Everything has been turned on its head, and they know it.
In the Introduction to an alternative Haggadah entitled “ Next Year in Safety & Liberation: Fighting Fascism & Genocide in the Jewish Tradition,” Liv Kunins-Berkowitz writes:
“As we gather for Passover, modern day Pharoahs are rising to power all over the world. In the United States, a fascist government is using the guise of fighting antisemitism to punish those who speak out for Palestinian freedom. This Passover gathering is an act of refusal. We will not allow our tradition, history, and identity, to be fuel for authoritarian crackdown”
Throughout all of this, our 10-year old granddaughter and I are undaunted, driven by our joy in creation, our love for others, and our endless reserves of hope and optimism, that things can be better.
Two years ago, when we wrote of Axolotls—the indefatigable amphibian found in a small lake in Mexico City—we wrote that:
“Little did the Mean King know,
That Axolotls can grow and grow.
Cut off a leg, they’ll grow it back!
Poke out their eyes, they’ll pop right back!
Even if the whole sky turns to black, you foolish Pharoah,
Axolotls NEVER lose hope—
They have that knack!
And so, we rallied again, inspired by the little creature that could.
Last year, in my despair over the utter destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of Palestinian children, our “Rainbow Passover,” lifted us out of darkness:
“The Rainbow People were free at last;
Their days as slaves, now long past.
Their differences, valued;
Their diversity, a blessing;
Each with a dignity that left no one guessing.
They had made it to the Promised Land,
With each giving the other a helping hand.”
No matter the destruction and devastation, we would continue our efforts, no matter how small, to repair the world. As Jews, we have an obligation to do so; as humans, there is no alternative.
So this year, this Passover, gives us another chance to imagine an alternative universe— beyond the bombed out schools and deaths of 175 children at their desks in Iran, or the intentional destruction of a civilian apartment building in Lebanon, crushing all inside; beyond the death by malnutrition and starvation of another 18,000 babies and children in Gaza, intentionally denied bread, water and medicine by the fanatical Pharoahs of our time.
This year we’ll include olives on our Seder Plate, to symbolize the rows and rows of Olive trees, sustainer of life, destroyed by fanatical Far Right West Bank settlers, on the small parcels of land farmed by Palestinian families for decades. To uproot such a farm, is to uproot a family’s history and it’s future.
For weeks, we’ve crafted a new story of Passover, this year influenced by the eternal optimism of Pokemon—and of my granddaughter, a glowing light in a dark valley.
This year, our Passover Haggadah is a work in progress and is as old as a humanitarian Judaism, Islam and Christianity—where all children are cherished and equal; and all, not just some, are “chosen” to be loved, protected, nourished, fed, and housed, raised far from bombs, and cradled in our arms of peace.
The 1st “NO KINGS” day was on the Porcine Emperor’s 79th Birthday, when five million of us marched for Democracy; than, 7 million more a few months later; now, no bullies nor bullets will stop us.
(The Emperor has no clothes, no brain, no allegiance to the US Constitution, no respect for democracy, no heart, no conscience & no soul. But he has spawned the largest pro-democracy, pro-America demonstrations in the nation’s 250 year history.)
For Donald Trump’s 77th birthday, almost 3 years ago—before he stole billions of our tax dollars for himself, his family and friends, the grotesque grifter was given the gift of a 37-count criminal indictment, with 31 of those charges pertaining to blatant violations of the Espionage Act, including spilling—or selling— Nuclear secrets.
His actions are similar to the 70+ year old case that resulted in execution by electrocution of Ethel & Julius Rosenberg for violating the Espionage Act, and allegedly passing national security secrets to the Russians. It’s so serendipitous, and certainly poetic, that, in the end, the lives of Trump and the Rosenbergs are intertwined, yet again, this time, without the repulsive Roy Cohn as the intermediary. Trump has transformed into his own stinking stain, exceeding the extraordinary evil of Roy Cohn.
A few years back, on the anniversary of the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg for allegedly providing valuable, top-secret information to the Russians about nuclear weapons designs, radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines, the WashingtonPost broke an explosive story headlined: “FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say.”
Now that we have physical evidence that boxes and boxes of highly classified US secrets—including Nuclear plans, and plans of how best to attack the US—were left in Trump’s bathroom, in a public ballroom and strewn about in closets and storage rooms, Trump’s illegal violations of the Espionage Acts are veering into Ethel and Julius territory. He’s already be behind bars if a Florida-based judge, jonesing for a future Judicial appointment, hadn’t improperly dismissed the airtight Espionage case against him.
As we’ve witnessed everyday in Trump’s incessant Smash, Destroy, Grab & Grift 2nd Administration’s frenzied fever to snort up every dollar and put everything in the U.S. up for sale—or put his own name on it—the prospect of Trump selling highly classified nuclear documents to Vladimir Putin or the Saudis for billions of dollars—or of his recklessness of his mishandling top secret documents he should never have had–has become increasingly plausible, thanks to documents accidently leaked this week to Congress by the Department of Justice, led by another Trump-kept Florida judicial officer, Pam Bondi.
This adds an entirely new, and dangerous, dimension to Trump’s reign of terror and massive error, including the possibility that Russian spies or foreign agents from anywhere, could have photographed these top secret military documents, while using the bathroom at Mar-A-Lago, or that Trump is still monetizing similar top secret, classified information—even while he is President.
Like Trump’s friend, mentor, role-model and lawyer Roy Cohn—lionized in the movie, “The Apprentice,” as Trump’s primary tutor—I grew up thinking that only alleged “communists” or “communist sympathizers,” spilled nuclear secrets to the Russians, and our enemies, not Presidents.
After all, it was Roy Cohn who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair for violating the Espionage Act. My devotion to the law, and faith in the US Justice system has been completely undermined over the past several years, but especially because Trump hasn’t been treated exactly the same way as Ethel & Julius, or as his best-friend Jeffrey Epstein, for abusing young girls. It is so unfair, as Trump himself would say.
And, since the geopolitical grifter Trump has not been treated the same way the Rosenbergs were, as a Jew, I believe the actions vs. the Rosenbergs were blatantly Anti-Semitic. It’s so on brand that Trump and his team of hatemongers —like Stephen Miller, Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth—have doubled-down on the phrase “Cultural Marxists,” a slur popularized by Adolf Hitler to demonize progressive Jews.
After I devoured the brilliantly researched and written 49-page criminal indictment of Trump which lays out not only his continuing theft of top secret classified documents over two years, but his willful obstruction of the Justice Department’s efforts to retrieve them, visions of Ethel Rosenberg, played by Meryl Streep in the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, began dancing on my brain. “Angels” is being produced again at a local theatre in my neighborhood later this Spring.
Quickly, I ran to get my printed and signed copy of Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize winning play.
I turned to the page where the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg shows up at Roy Cohn’s bedside, as he lay dying of AIDS. Cohn, who was Donald Trump’s personal role-model and fellow Studio 54 partier, as well as his attorney and the attorney for major organized crime families in New York to whom he introduced Trump, had hounded Ethel and her husband Julius into electric-chair executions three years after her arrest in 1950.
ETHEL: They won, Roy. You’re not a lawyer anymore.
ROY: But am I dead?
ETHEL: No. They beat you. You lost.
(Pause)
ETHEL:
I decided to come here so I could see if I could forgive you. You who I have hated so terribly. I have borne my hatred for you up into the heavens and made a needlesharp little star in the sky out of it. It’s the star of Ethel Rosenberg’s Hatred, and it burns every year for one night only, June 19. (June 19, 1953, was the day Ethel and her husband Julius were executed. Ethel had to be electrocuted three times before she finallydied.) It burns acid green.
I came to forgive, but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery. Hoping I’d get to see you die more terrible than I did. And you are, ‘cause you’re dying in shit, Roy, defeated. And you could kill me, but you could never defeat me. You never won. And when you die all anyone will say is: better he had never lived at all.”
Will the same thing be said of Trump? Is Trump destined to become his own Roy Cohn? Will as Cohn did, die in his own shit, babbling baby-talk about ballrooms and ballpoint pens and stripped of everything he ever knew?
The only President in all of American history to be twice impeached (and working on a three-peat) twice indicted of crimes, and twice arrested (so far), Trump’s recklessness, carelessness and flagrant disregard for any and all laws—domestic orinternational—have surprised even those of us who have long pegged him as a criminal cipher, a con, a fraud, a liar, and a mob-boss wannabe.
Is he capable of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians or the Saudis, or the highest bidder? Is he capable of forgiving the Qataris of funding the single biggest act of violence and terror vs. the U.S.—committed 25 years ago this September 11— and accept gilded planes, gifts and billions of dollars in bribes from them and the Saudis?
Would Trump sell pardons to the highest bidders or the facilitators of such bribes, as he did with Michael Flynn, and then reward them with taxpayer-funded payouts for being prosecuted for crimes to which his handmaids pleaded guilty? Would Trump white wash the most heinous sex crimes committed against children in U.S. history, in which he participated, according to testimony given to the FBI? Would the porcine Pedofile protector profer a pardon for the female Sex Trafficker, Ghislaine Maxwell, who facilitated and participated in those crimes in exchange for her silence about his involvement?
Perhaps, the only appropriate eulogy that could be given for Trump’s lawless, truthless, soul-less half-century headlong flight from accountability of any kind for every crime he ever committed, and his unending drag show of distraction in public, is a variation on the theme expressed by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg—thrice electrocuted– over Roy Cohn’s deathbed:
“Better he never had never lived a public life at all.”
(The Napa County, CA., Sculpture of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, by Napa sculptor Mario Chiodo. Photo by the Napa Valley Register)
I woke up the morning I learned the news and couldn’t catch my breath.
No, it wasn’t because of my age; it wasn’t because almost daily now, I hear of another old friend or former colleague getting a debilitating disease or disability, or dying.
It wasn’t because another school full of young, innocent Muslim girls was obliterated, or a high-rise residential apartment tower in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon, blown to bits by Israeli terrorists—masquerading as a government—with each floor pancaking upon the one below it, crushing into dust any humans still inside.
It wasn’t because something bad had happened, God forbid, to one of my granddaughters or my son or my partner of 54-years. Those are a steady drumbeat of worries, which always come in bunches, and not as single spies. That is the background music to my life; a constant hum.
And, no, it wasn’t because of another all-too real series of night terrors of mine, where I raced against time to prevent a bomb from going off, or spent the darkness loudly cursing out Trump or Bondi or Bibi or Hegseth or a long litany of monsters, until my shouts awakened others to how conscious my unconscious had become.
What made me gasp for air this time, was a headline in the on-line New York Times confirming disturbing rumors we heard about Cesar Chavez, the day before, but tried to dismiss because there no credible sources for those rumors, and we know how anything can be made up by anyone, anywhere at anytime and become what passes for fact, instantly.
Only this morning, the source could not be more credible: it was Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ co-leader of the United Farm Workers union, and, at 96, the living heart and soul of the movement for social & economic justice for more than 65 years.
There was the New York Times headline: “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years.” And there were the sources: Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas—two women raped by Chavez when they were young girls in the 1970’s; and Dolores Huerta, Chavez’ most prominent female ally in the Farm Workers Movement, and a labor-movement icon in her own right.
Dolores Huerta, 96 years old, who suffocated a secret for 60 years, of having been raped by Cesar Chavez, on more than one occasion, resulting in two pregnancies—which she hid—and the birth of two daughters, whom she gave away to be raised in more stable family settings. This was Cesar Chavez. This was Dolores Huerta. Two pillars of my life from my early years of college; two symbols of the urgency of struggle to bring about sweeping social change; two working-class heroes.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Melinda Henneberger was eloquent in her excruciatingly painful description of the torment which Huerta had hidden for six decades, in her Substack column entitled Kansas City Stack, headlined: “Why did Dolores Huerta wait 60 years to accuse César Chávez of rape? I hope I know the answer:
‘Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing’
From the Times story:
“Ms. Huerta said he abused her not only physically but emotionally. Union records document an argument at La Paz between the two of them over missing financial receipts during a board meeting in 1979. Ms. Huerta demanded respect and pushed back against his suggestions that she had stolen money. Mr. Chávez responded by shouting at her with curses and insults, repeatedly calling her a stupid bitch, according to the audio recordings of board meetings The Times listened to.
Ms. Huerta struggles to reconcile the César Chávez she knew, who inspired so many and achieved so much, and the man who assaulted her and publicly humiliated her. She said she was unaware of any sexual abuse of teenage girls. Moments after some of that abuse was described to her, Ms. Huerta broke down, sobbing and wailing.”
Hennenberger: “That made me want to wail, too. According to the story, both times Chávez abused Huerta resulted in a pregnancy she said she concealed “by wearing baggy clothes and ponchos.” She gave birth both times, too, to baby girls, “and then arranged for them to be raised by others.” In her statement today, she said that even though she’s been able to stay close to those children, who know her other children, “no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.” That’s so enormous, for everyone involved, that there’s no way to overstate it.”
If that’s what happened, every single piece of this — being raped by your boss and work partner, whose brother later became your life partner — and then having to hide two children you could not raise or tell how they came to be — is so painful that if only those who’d walked that mile could judge, no one would.”
I re-read the New York Times investigative report on Cesar Chavez several times in disbelief. How could all of us not know that Cesar Chavez was Jeffrey Epstein before there was a Jeffrey Epstein? How could this God-like man rape little girls? Exactly because he wasn’t a God.
Henneberger and I did the same thing: ran to an authority we both knew on the Farm Workers Union and Cesar Chavez, the journalist/historian Miriam Pawel, who wrote two books on the union and Chavez. Melinda seized upon a telling paragraph written by Pawel:
“As Miriam Pawel relates in her authoritative biography—the second of two books she has written about the UFW’s rise and fall—Chavez’s personal obsessions, combined with his sudden fame and power, and some of the more malign elements of America’s culture in the 1970s, gradually caused him to turn narcissistic and to encourage a cult built around him.”
Perhaps because of my professional background as a labor organizer for national teachers unions—which I was practicing at the very same time that Chavez and Dolores Huerta were organizing Farm Workers—I was drawn to another powerful passage written by Pawel in : “The Union of their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement,” Bloomsbury Press, NY., NY, 2009:
“Those who once dedicated their lives to Cesar Chavez’s crusades now wince when they drive past farmworkers, hunched over rows of vegetables or trimming grapevines in the bitter cold. Once so certain they could change that world, the UFW alumni rue their failure. They applaud each other’s individual accomplishments, but lament the lost opportunity to collectively achieve even more. The memories still cause pain.”
Now, the pain is multiplied, and much, much more profound than the failure of a union or an organization or a government or a leader to live up to its, or his or her, promise, and our hopes. Those of us who have worked for unions, or non-profit organizations, or socially conscious corporations or good-government Administrations have all known that deep level of disappointment and disillusionment when things do not turn out the way we wanted.
But, the rape of young children, and of co-workers, and the decades long destruction and those lives, is something far more devastating, and damaging, than mere disappointment and disillusionment.
It’s enough to make all of us “break down, sob and wail,” and gasp for air.
Illegal, immoral, lawless “preventive” bombing attacks on Irans & Lebanon’s civilian populations by Israel and the United States, have violated all laws, ethics, and any semblance of humanity.
( Israeli Ultra-Nationalists and warmongers National Security Minister Ben-Gvir (l.), Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and Finance Minister Smotrech, far right.)
(US officials Trump & Hegseth (not pictured) are conducting an illegal war with Israel against Iran, Lebanon, Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank.)
At long last, after decades of blocking any peace agreement between the Unite States and Iran, pleading for US support for “decapitating” (assassinating) Iranian leaders; undermining all efforts for a two-state solution with Palestinians; and succeeding in securing an endless stream of American armaments to annihilate 20,000 innocent Palestinian children and turn Gaza into a mass graveyard, Israel, under the totalitarian leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has unveiled it’s secret weapon against the Muslim world: the United States military, led by a Christian Nationalist extremist who hates Muslims as much as the Netanyahu gang does, and green-lighted by an American Golem of a President who would do anything toescape jail, and the Epstein files.
Netanyahu and his extremist Ultra Nationalist government—driven by convicted terrorist Meir Kahane’s disciples Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli’s National Security Minister and Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Finance Minister— chose to respond to the October 7, 2023, massacre by Hamas of more than 1200 innocent Israeli citizens and the forced kidnapping of hundreds of hostages, by grinding Gaza into the dust, and killing more than 75,000 Palestinian non-combatants. Such a genocidal counter-attack also blew up the most fundamental Jewish ethical standard of “proportionality of response,” which guided the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since it’s inception.
Critics of the Netanyahu’s genocidal and disproportionate response to Hamas’ horrible murders and torture of innocent Israelis were instantly assailed as Anti-Semites—including Jews in Israel and abroad , if we questioned not only the Israeli government’s utter annihilation of Gaza, but Netanyahu’s sinister track record of previously providing funding to Hamas for the terrorist organization to torpedo any Palestinian hopes for a two-state solution—an outcome which Netanyahu and his extreme right wing supporters violently oppose.
Overnight, any semblance of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF), Code of Ethics for the IDF was obliterated by the Netanyahu government. Before BiBi bastardized the highly regarded Israeli Military and transformed it into his own ICE-like hit squad, the Code of Ethics for the IDF—based upon fundamental humanitarian principles of Judaism— commanded the IDF to adhere to specific rules of combat.
That Code of Ethics, required as part of basic training for IDF soldiers for decades, consisted of four essential principles:
· NECESSITY: “to apply force only for the sake of the mission;”
· DISTINCTION: “aim your fire at those who pose a threat, NOT at combatants indiscriminately;
· RESPONSIBILITY: “since you know there will be collateral harm of civilians, you have to do whatever you can to MINIMIZE the expected collateral harm.”
· PROPORTIONALITY: “Is the expected collateral harm proportionate to the military achievement?”
Netanyahu and his megalomaniacal, anti-Judaic cabinet— hell-bent on driving Palestinians and Muslims from all parts of Israel and from surrounding lands in the Middle East— negated all of that moral and ethical guidance for Israel’s soldiers, which had gained the IDF world-wide respect for decades. Unarmed Palestinian women and children—either in Gaza or the West Bank—were considered sub-human by the Ultra Nationalists controlling the Israeli government and its’ armed forces. Fanatical, law-breaking Israeli settlers were permitted to randomly kill Palestinians and to destroy life-sustaining olive-tree orchards of Palestinian families living in the West Bank for decades, while the IDF stood by silently and did not act to protect human life.
Instead of abiding by the IDF’s historic ethical code, Bibi and his band of extremists justified dropping 2,000 pound bunker-buster bombs—provided by the UnitedStates—on civilian populations by claiming, suspiciously, that Hamas or Hezbollah combatants had hidden themselves underneath non-combatant populations and structures, like hospitals, schools, day-care centers, or apartment buildings.
Just this week in Iran, the exact same bogus argument was used when US Tomahawk missiles, obliterated an all-girls school where some 150 young Iranian girls were massacred.
By its’ own actions, the Netanyahu government has not only trashed the humanitarian underpinnings of Judaism—an ethical, spiritual and religious standard that existed thousands of year before Israel did—but has single-handedly undermined the credibility of any statements or videos coming from the IDF or the nation of Israel, much as the Trump Administration and the US Defense Department under former Fox-News commentator Pete Hegseth has done. Facts and any concern for humanity have been suffocated completely in the fog and fury of of an undeclared, illegal war with extraordinarily high personal and political stakes for both Netanyahu and Trump.
Under the spurious “self-defense” definition defiled by Israel—and used as a fake shield to justify military attacks upon others— any civilian population in any country in which anti-Israel terrorists may be hiding is fair game for any indiscriminate—and non-proportional— IDF attack. National borders, international law, or individual state sovereignty do not matter under this new formulation of “self-defense” by the Netanyahu government, and echoed by the most anti-democratic, fascist government in United States history. To phrase it differently, “we have seen the enemy, and it is everybody else, but us.”
Netanyahu and the Ultra Nationalists ruling Israel, have effectively used the “self-defense” trap to ensnare the US and other allies in its illegal military actions, expanding it’s unending crusade for revenge for the murders of October 7, 2023, well-beyond retribution against Hamas, or the boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank.
Prior to this week’s unprovoked attack upon Iran by Israel and the United States, and Israel’s massive bombing campaign in Lebanon which has, so far, driven 700,000 Lebanese citizens from their homes, Bibi launched a Regional “Ring of Fire” War against the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Anyone Netanyahu perceived to be a threat to Israel was fair game for a “disproportionate”attack, without any reason required, except those manufactured by BiBi. The Trump Administration has adopted the same nationalistic, militaristic approach to all other countries it deems a threat in the Western Hemisphere, includingVenezuela, Cuba, and at times, Mexico.
Before using the United States military as a shiny, new blunt instrument of terror against Iran over the past few weeks, Israel had already dangerously expanded it’s “Ring of Fire,” across the national borders of Lebanon, Yemen & Syria.
The first Israeli/American missile strikes against Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities in June, 2025—which failed to take them out, despite Trump’s claim they were “obliterated”— was, the Israeli’s said, to retaliate for Iranian missiles being launched into Israel. In truth, Iran’s missile attack was done in response to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah strong holds in Southern Lebanon, the assassination of Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and the maiming of thousands of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese citizens with exploding personal communications devices—an illegal act on Israel’s part, considered by some, to constitute terrorism against the nation of Lebanon and its people. This week, Israel stepped up its acts of terror against the non-combatants of Lebanon by carpet-bombing Beirut.
Two years ago, in a remarkably prophetic piece, the Jewish publication The Forward outlined several military options Israel might take against Iran, which would shatter any hopes for a ceasefire, any chance of peace in the MidEast, and destabilize democratic nations and economies around the world, which is precisely what is happening right now during this current assault on Iran and Lebanon:
· “A tactical strike on Iran: A more substantial response could involve direct military action against Iranian assets, such as oil facilities or military installations. This would aim to inflict real damage on Iran’s infrastructure, forcing it to reconsider further provocations.
An attack on an oil installation, for instance, could disrupt Iran’s economic lifelines and send the clear message that Israel will not tolerate continued missile strikes. The goal here would be to create enough pain for Iran to deter future actions, without pushing the region into a full-scale war.”
· “A strategic overhaul of the region’s balance of power: This option is far more ambitious, and fraught with risk, but could reshape the Middle East. It would involve Israel somehow pushing the West to lay down the law with Iran, demanding not just an end to its missile strikes, but a full dismantling of its nuclear program and an end to its sponsorship of proxy forces across the region”.
The Forward goes on to point out that the most extreme option poses a serious, not hypothetical, risk of starting World War III:
“If Iran responds forcefully, the U.S. would almost certainly be drawn into the conflict to protect Israel. This could trigger a chain reaction, with Russia and China, both of whom have strategic relationships with Iran, seeing an opportunity to exploit the chaos. China could use the distraction to finally make a long-threatened move on Taiwan, while Russian President Vladimir Putin might take the opportunity to expand his war in Ukraine, or press into neighboring countries.
The global balance of power would be thrown into disarray, with potentially catastrophic consequences.”
The stakes here, at this very instant in human history, are extraordinary, and not just for the future existence of Israel, nor the existence of Iran, nor the entire Middle East, but for all of us.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, in his final speech delivered at a Peace Rally where he was assassinated by an Ultra Nationalist Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995, stated clearly one of the fundamental principles upon which the State of Israel was built:
“The path of peace is preferable to the path of war. I say this as a military man…and see the pain of the families of the IDF soldiers. For them, for our children, in my case for our grandchildren, I want this Government to exhaust every opening, every possibility to promote and achieve a comprehensive peace.”
Netanyahu and the terrorist clones of Kahane now surrounding him, campaigned against every peace initiative put forth by Rabin going back 30 years–especially regarding a Two-State solution as outlined in the original UN Charter which created Israel. Cowardly US members of Congress—who received an extraordinary amount of money from the American/Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC)— enabled Bibi to directly undermine US National Security interests and Barack Obama’s Nuclear Peace Treaty with Iran in 2014, and again in 2024, when they facilitated BiBi’s bullying and bloviating before Congress to scuttle American cease-fire efforts in Gaza, tied to the freeing of the remaining hostages.
Netanyahu and his nationalist war-mongers never entertained any exit plan from Gaza nor the West Bank that involved Palestinian self-determination, or contradicts the fever dreams of the Ultra Nationalist coalition keeping Netanyahu in power, and out of prison.
The same nihilistic “no-exit” strategy applies to the brutal and illegal war being waged right now against Iran and Lebanon. But now Bibi has all-to-willing accomplices in the President of the United States—as eager to stay out of jail for crimes he has committed as Netanyahu is— and a messianic Christian US Secretary of Defense out to rid the world of, ironically, non-Christian infidels, who simply clutter the path to Armaggedon, the return of Christ to the Holy Land, and the forced conversion of all Jews to Christianity.
Ironically, Pope Leo, the Christian leader who heads the single largest Christian group in the world—1.39 billion baptized Catholics—has a far different take on the destruction of Gaza, the violence in the West Bank, the incessant bombing of Iran and Lebanon, and the Nationalist fiction that nations—like Israel and the United States—had the right to launch “preventive wars:”
“Let us raise our humble prayer to the Lord that the roar of bombs may cease, that weapons may fall silent, and that space may be opened for dialogue in which the voices of peoples can be heard.”
Two of Pope Leo’s most prominent representatives in the United States, Cardinal Blase Cupich, from Pope Leo’s hometown of Chicago, and Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, have strongly denounced the latest War in Iran, with Cupich calling it:
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening.”
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Archbishop of Washington, told the Associated Press just this week that the U.S. and Israel had failed to meet the minimum criteria for the war to be considered morally just:
“Lebanon may fall into civil war. The world’s oil supply is under great strain. The potential disintegration of Iran could well produce new and dangerous realities. And the possibility of immense casualties on all sides is immense. For all of these reasons, Catholic teaching leads to the conclusion that our entry into this war was not morally legitimate.”
Jewish organizations in the US and worldwide, like the American Council for Judiasm, and the Jewish Voice for Peace have offered an alternative voice for Jews, offering “Judaism beyond Zionism,” which, according to a March 2026 article in The Nation by Joseph Dana (“The Long Shadow of the ‘Jewish Question’”) points to a growing collection of:
“Synagogues, study groups, and ritual communities whose identity does not depend on an attachment to any state…These groups argue that thriving diaspora life is not a deficiency awaiting a territorial cure, but a legitimate form of Jewish existence that predates and will outlast the current crisis—and is, in fact, necessary to resolving it…these movements share a refusal to let the Israeli state define what Jewish identity means.”
Dana goes on to point out that, “In 2024, the Jewish Council of Australia was formed to explicitly challenge the claim that established Zionist organizations spoke for all Jews. When the council called for sanctions on Israel and an end to military ties, it framed its position as emerging from rather than contradicting its members’s Jewishness.”
Perhaps the merging of Israeli and US nationalist, militaristic and totalitarian ambitions will finally force American Jews to face the future of our continued connection to Israel, to mainstream Jewish organization, to AIPAC, and to public officials who pretend to be acting in our best interests, when, in fact, they are acting against the fundamental humanitarian teachings of our Judaism.
Writing about many of us Jews, worldwide, seeking a different, more just and humane definition of Judaism, Dana concludes in his article in The Nation:
“They are proposing an identity that doesn’t need to be defended through domination. The answer to what it means to be Jewish need not come at Palestian (nor Muslim—my edit) expense.”
The wisdom of Rabbi Hillel, the Elder, has never been more necessary for American Jews, and Jews worldwide to heed:
