Please, no more lectures! For the Jewish people, finger-wagging lost its meaning after October 8th, 2023

Post Oct 7th, 2023, first came the words of outrage followed by encouragement and sympathy. Numerous heads of state flew in to tour Gaza-adjacent Israeli communities, where 1,200 men women and children were slaughtered, raped, beheaded, and taken hostage by Hamas bloodthirsty terrorists.

Then an eerie silence as Hamas supporters, extreme haters of Israel, al Jazeera and a tsunami of social media bots, flipped the script, embedding Israel as the evil doer.

Their crime? Counterattacking against Hamas and its 500 km underground city of terror. UN agencies, pious international courts, special rapporteurs, human rights NGOs, BBC-led hit pieces and social media bots and influencers, demonized a traumatized Jewish nation and taught the world to spell Zionist=N-A-Z-I.

“From River to Sea Palestine will be Free” echoed for month after month on elite Universities on six continents.

All the time Hamas literally grew fat and wealthy from its big lies that the Jewish state was starving Gazans and mass murdering Arab children.

Social Media and Islamist extremists and the far left-- from Toronto to Sydney to Madrid and London-- did the rest: the result the normalization of violent Jew-hatred online and on the streets of world capitals.

Now amidst, the US/Israel-led war to crush an Ayatollah regime that just slaughtered at some 45,000 of its own mostly young citizens, Israel is again subject to massive incoming—not only from Iranian, Hezbollah, and Houthi, missiles targeting civilian communities but by democratic leaders and some well compensated “influencers”. 

German President Steinmayer, known as a friend of Israel, declared that the Iranian “war is contrary to international law”, adding… “What frustrates me the most. A truly avoidable, unnecessary war, if its goal was to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”

"The nuclear agreement already helped us make so much progress. We were never further from an Iranian nuclear weapon than after the signing of the 2015 nuclear deal” he added.

I guess Steinmeyer missed the loud boasts of Iranian “negotiators” who told US mediators they had enough uranium to produce 14 nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, French President Macron decided to ban US cargo planes delivering munitions to Israel.

This time, Israel took action, canceling all its military contracts with a democracy all too happy to acquire Israeli hi-tech knowhow, but too gutless to back a friendly nation lest it upset France’s Arab street.

And then amidst the nonstop ballistic missile attacks and Hamas’ continuing efforts to attack Israelis from Gaza and the West Bank, that Israel’s Knesset voted 62-48 to install the death penalty for terrorists. Many analysts saw this as a victory for Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. 

RELATED | Israel passes death penalty law for terrorists convicted of deadly attacks

Israel was subject to withering verbal attacks. One anti-Israel protest in Damascus would have turned into a lynch mob in Damascus, but alas all Jews had been driven out years ago by the Assads. The corrupt Palestinian Authority led by President President Abbas now in his 17th year of his 4-year term was apoplectic: It condemned the law as a "dangerous escalation" and a "war crime.” The PA Foreign Ministry calling it a tool to legalize extrajudicial killings. The reality is that for every attack carried out by Hamas, the PA’s Pay-to-Slay law ensure that murderers are turned into millionaires, and their families guaranteed a monthly stipend.

Israel’s friends and foes miss the real point here. Ben Gvir didn’t create the groundswell for this bill; he cashed in on popular sentiment particularly after the Oct 7th pogrom which was led by an arch terrorist released earlier for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The wind behind the sails of this bill to try, convict, and execute Palestinian mass murderers of Israelis comes from, Iranian trainers, Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood for paymasters, UNRWA teachers brainwashing generations of children, and so-called human rights leaders for going mute whenever Jewish blood was shed.

No, Israel’s robust and loud democracy is not in danger. Ben Gvir’s bill and another tied to Oct 7th murderers will have to pass through the gates of Israel’s Supreme Court. It will be they and not the manipulated court of international public opinion who will have the last word.

Finally, on Palm Sunday, the Vatican’s Latin Patriarch was not allowed to enter Jerusalem Old City’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. All hell broke loose. But what the Latin Patriarch surely knew was that a part of an Iranian ballistic missile landed in the church’s courtyard and other missiles just missed Jerusalem’s holiest site—the Western Wall. All major religious sites had been closed to protect the faithful, not to harm them.

By Easter Sunday and during the intermediary days of Passover those holy sites were opened for small gatherings, not the anticipated throngs. Maybe Israeli authorities should have been thanked?

Maybe when the Messiah arrives. Until then don’t count on it.

Source: jpost.com, Abraham Cooper, April 14, 2026. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean and Director of the Global Social Action Agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Chairman Emeritus of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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