We are shocked and saddened by the horrific actions Hamas has taken toward Israel and its citizens. Let’s stand together as a community and support Israel.
Listen to the recording of a local radio interview with Israel’s Consul General, Livia Link-Raviv. Broadcast from Tuesday, December 19, 2023.
Below, read the latest from the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America (JCCA).
1/12/24
Day 97: Iron Swords War
By Leah Garber
So often during the last 97 days, all I wanted was to go back to sleep and wake up from this horrible nightmare to a new morning, shake off the remnants of the horrors that I dreamt, and realize that October 7th didn’t really happen. It was just a bad dream. If only…
But for 97 days I have been waking up to a reality that is worse than any nightmare could possibly be. Even in the worst of hallucinations, it is impossible to imagine human hands beheading babies, burning people alive, brutally raping women and children, and holding 136 people captive for nearly 100 days.
But it happened.
Worse than anything a distorted imagination might envision has happened, and Israel is reacting—responding with determination, responsibility, and as any sovereign country would if its citizens were slaughtered with monstrous brutality. Israel is not reacting out of a sense of revenge, but from its basic duty to keep its citizens safe. Israel reacts to ensure that the heinous murderers—who expressed no remorse for their actions and vowed to repeat them over and over—will not be able to do so.
This morning, I awoke to another day of living alongside the war, but today the usual anguished feeling is accompanied by frustration and rage that I haven’t felt in a long time, and perhaps never. I can feel the pain in my bones. It clutches at me and is suffocating.
Today, January 11, 2024, is a day to remember.
It’s the day the International Court of Justice gave way to record-breaking hypocrisy, by hosting an absurd show in the name of international justice. This day will be remembered as a disgrace.
Who would have believed that despite the overwhelming evidence—including that provided by the murderers themselves; the documents; the films; the mutilated bodies; and the cries of 136 abductees—those who stand in the dock today in The Hague are not the terrorists of Hamas, but the State of Israel. Israel, a country that woke up on the morning of a holiday to the deafening noise of dozens of rockets fired all over the country without any provocation. Israel, a country that for years has had tens of thousands of missiles aimed at its civilian population.
On that one day, 1,300 people were murdered. Entire communities were destroyed, and the one standing in the dock is not the attacker, but the attacked. There is not enough soil to contain all the graves, not enough tears to cry all the sorrow. What world are we living in?!
Does the fact that Baby K’fir celebrated his first birthday in captivity this week—without a birthday cake, candles to brighten the darkness, gifts, smiles, or hope—keep the prosecutors awake at night? How is it possible to ignore the fact that after 90 days (!) families were informed that their loved ones were murdered on October 7, and after all this time required to identify a lump of coal as the remains, based on a tiny piece of embroidery and work in sophisticated forensic laboratories? How are these people not squirming in their seats?
As parents, what goes through the prosecutors’ minds when they hear about the fear in Israel that hostages still in Gaza may have become pregnant because of the brutal gang rape they endured?
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that the accusations South Africa has made against Israel are baseless lies and the most hypocritical in history. In a public statement, the ministry said South Africa was being used as a judicial arm of the Hamas terror group and had presented a perverted account of the October 7 massacre that completely ignored the Hamas atrocities and the kidnapping of civilians as hostages.
How dare the prosecutors ignore the fact that Hamas uses its own civilian population in Gaza as human shields and operates from hospitals, schools, U.N. shelters, mosques, and churches—all with the intent to endanger the lives of residents of the Gaza Strip. Hamas commits crimes against its own people and against all humanity, but the one who stands as a defendant is Israel.
Maybe I am having a nightmare after all, and I’ll wake up soon. Will we all wake up?
If in the last 97 days my tears were salty ones of pain, today they are bitter and stinging. Apparently, that’s the taste of rage.
Together, united, we will overcome.
Leah Garber is a senior vice president of JCC Association of North America and director of its Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem.
A Message from the JCC Board President and CEO
Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been murdered in one day. There is no moral equivalent between Israel, a country fighting for its existential right to exist, and Hamas terrorists, whose barbaric acts are proof of their stated desire, not to achieve self-determination for Palestinians or peace in Gaza, but to destroy the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
Most people, regardless of background, condemn the evil Hamas perpetrated over the weekend while Jews were celebrating the holy day of Simchat Torah. However, there are those whose response normalizes antisemitism–American activists celebrating the loss of Jewish life in major cities across the country. Politicians and leaders refusing to unequivocally condemn Hamas’ brutal acts. 31 student organizations at Harvard and more at Berkeley blaming Israel for the atrocities unleashed by Hamas. The United Nations rejecting calls to denounce the terrorism. And some media outlets, declining to call Hamas “terrorists,” opting instead to use gentler terms like “soldiers” or “fighters.” Soldiers and fighters do not brutalize innocent women, children, and babies like Hamas did.
“Never Again” became the rallying cry for the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Holocaust and led to the creation of Israel. “Never Again” signifies the collective determination to ensure that the systematic persecution and murder of Jews would end with the Holocaust. As we mourn the lives lost and irrevocably changed in the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack over the weekend–Israeli lives, Palestinian lives, American lives, and countless of other lives lost and forever changed–let us stand with and for the people of Israel and exercise the courage to clearly denounce terrorism and hatred wherever and in whatever form it occurs. It is only by standing together against violence and hatred that we can build a society where the cries of “Never Again” echo not just as a reminder of the past, but as a beacon guiding us toward a future where all our children, regardless of background, can live without fear.
Am Israel Chai
Nicole Werkmeister, President Shelly Prant, JCC CEO