“War is hell.”

There has never been and never will be a more apt description.  War is ugly.  It is bloody.  It is shameless.  It is unconscionable.

And, sometimes, war is necessary.

We cannot avoid war when our enemies pursue it so relentlessly and that is a shame.  Hamas has launched hundreds of rockets at Israel.  For a long time, Israel did not reply except to shoot down the most dangerous rockets.  But this was a situation that could not last forever.  Israel warned Hamas repeatedly that the attacks had to stop, but Hamas and its sister group, Islamic Jihad, continued to fire rockets from Gaza.  Israel warned Hamas that they may target military leaders for assassination, but Hamas continued on its course.

Now Hamas is paying the piper.  It’s natural for any supporter of Israel to be relieved: though the rocket attacks continue Hamas is clearly shooting its last bolt.  The man most responsible for planning these attacks is dead, killed in an amazing precision airstrike.  Do not be deceived, though.  This is war and it is far from over.

We will see some ugly images over the next few days and weeks.  Children will die.  They will die horrifically.  Israeli children will die because it pleases Hamas that they do.  Palestinian children will die because Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters hide amongst civilians.  They do this so that any Israeli defense appears to be disproportionately violent.  Israeli soldiers wear uniforms; terrorists do not.

Israel has warned Hamas and the people of Gaza time and again that there will be consequences for their actions.  Those warnings have gone unheeded.  Israel takes care not to hurt innocent civilians, but how can the IDF be sure to protect innocents when villains hide amongst them?  More innocents will die.  It’s unavoidable.  In military parlance this is sometimes referred to as “collateral damage.”  Let’s not dismiss the innocent so callously.  Innocents, both Arab and Israeli, will die, because Hamas wants it to be so.  The only way for it to stop is to end Hamas.  So in this conflict, as the innocent and the not-so-innocent die, let’s acknowledge the unfair and ugly truth: war is hell.

And, sometimes, war is necessary.

The post War’s One Truth appeared first on Act for Israel.

Immediately after graduation I started a State Department internship in Vienna.  While I “walked” in May with the rest of my classmates, I stayed enrolled so that I could go to Vienna for the valuable work experience.  This meant that my parents paid for another year’s worth of tuition, plus whatever extra funds I needed beyond my meager State Department stipend.  When the holidays rolled around most Americans packed up and went home, but I had to stay: I simply could not afford to fly home.  I missed an entire year’s worth of High Holidays as well as Thanksgiving.  This was the first time I had missed any holiday with my family and I ended up missing all of them!

The next year I flew back home and straight to my new job in Washington, D.C.  It was an exciting job and my stay in Vienna turned out to be a savvy move, but my job kept me busy.  My grandmother had just begun chemotherapy for breast cancer so my mother and grandfather couldn’t leave her side (my poor father had to work as well).  Finally, after several months on the job I begged my boss for Rosh Hashanah off.

I couldn’t even get home until Thursday, after the first night of Rosh Hashanah.  My family had put off celebrating until I showed.  What I didn’t realize until I walked in was that they had put off celebrating everything for the past year.  They had piled up latkes next to generous heaps of sour cream and applesauce.  My grandmother actually brought a cheap plastic dreidel and insist we play—something I hadn’t done for years.  We bet, as we usually did, chocolate coins.  My grandmother kept a secret bankroll under her chair in case any of us went “bankrupt.”

We sped through a year’s worth of holidays that night.  When we finally got to Rosh Hashanah for that year my grandfather brought me the shofar—the ceremonial ram’s horn blown every Jewish new year.  I’d never blown the shofar: that was supposed to be a man’s job.  But this year, my grandfather decided that I should do it.  He knew that this was their last Rosh Hashanah.  I wouldn’t have guessed it, but somehow he knew that the mastectomies and chemotherapy had failed my grandmother.  He must have known he could not live without her.  And so he decided that on his last Rosh Hashanah I would blow the shofar.

I put the horn up to my mouth and blew.  From the end out came a little “toot” and my family burst into laughter.  I tried to hand the shofar back—at this point I was sure my grandfather was playing one of his jokes on me—but my grandfather shook his head.  “Like this,” he said, and puckered up his lips and blew a raspberry.  I tried again.  A little better.  He nodded for me to go on.  I blew the horn again and this time a respectable sound came out.  He clapped and my family cheered.  I smiled.  We were all so happy.

That Sunday I was back in D.C.  I was so busy that Thanksgiving and Hanukkah were with friends and not family.  Then came the word: my grandmother’s cancer had come back.  She made her peace and passed away.  My grandfather was inconsolable and he followed her a few weeks later.

My mother packed up my grandparent’s apartment while I took the train back to D.C.  A few days later my roommate told me that a package had arrived for me.  When I got to open it I burst out laughing: she had sent me the shofar, along with instructions how to blow it, written out by my grandfather.

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My college’s quad is huge.  It’s one of those institutions that tries to hold true to the idea that students should eat, drink, go to classes, and live on the quad.  As you might imagine, then, it caused some serious consternation when a student hung the Confederate flag from his window.  I certainly wasn’t happy about it: to me the Confederacy stands for slavery and treason.  To this student, though, it stood for Southern heritage.  The school’s reaction was schizophrenic.  On one hand, students were allowed to hang things from their windows.  On the other hand, the school was concerned about how this made them look.  When a few guys from the Black Student Union started to picket on the quad, the administration was alarmed.  When one of the BSU students invited Al Sharpton to come to campus the college had heard enough: the flag had to go.

To his credit, the guy took down the flag without raising a ruckus.  I’m sure he was annoyed, but he knew that—in this case—discretion may have been the better part of valor.  To the school’s frustration, the controversy continued to play out in the campus newspaper.  Al Sharpton decided to come to campus even though the flag was down.  I remember talking in the computer lab with the lab director.  He was a big, bluff, ancient, Bavarian, conservative Catholic whose family fled the Nazis.  His family’s flight from Germany when he was eight was hard on him, especially as he was named Adolf.  In any case, he and I agreed that the school’s actions were wrong.  This was probably the only time we agreed on anything, but we both felt that the school had overstepped what was right in the name of “political correctness.”  As we spoke another girl swept up to us and pronounced: “political correctness does not inhibit free speech, it enables it.”  And just as quickly she swept out the door.  Adolf leaned forward and smiled and said, “You know, if she really believed that, she would have stayed to argue the point.”

Without a doubt, I’ve seen people on both the left and the right try to muzzle people with political correctness.  Since the flag incident I’ve been doubly sensitive about free speech.  That, freedom of religion, and the equality of all men and women before the law, are the cornerstones of Western civilization.  I’ve learned that people who try to muzzle others—especially under the aegis of political correctness—are not interested in upholding Western civilization.  They may be liberal progressives like me, but they refuse to give the other side a voice.  They prefer to dictate to people how they should live, worship, and speak.  It’s been hard for me to accept, but when you allow the core rights of Western civilization to slip away—even in the name of the greater good—how is the result different from something like fascism or Sharia law?  If I am willing to give someone so much power over my thoughts and actions then what will protect me from the burkha?  What rights will I have?

This is why the effort to force the Guardian to fire Joshua Treviño bothers me so much.  It’s not that I agree with what he has to say: it’s that I agree that he has every right to say it.  The Guardian, by employing him, is only allowing its readers to hear a different viewpoint.  They are offering diversity of thought.  If you don’t like what he has to say then don’t ignore it, engage it.

To support Joshua Treviño please tweet @GuardianUS and let them know you stand with freedom of speech!

The post “Free Speech Isn’t Free” Isn’t Just a Cliché appeared first on Act for Israel.

My college had a very active Jewish sorority.  Every year we built homes for Habitat for Humanity.  We gave out candies on the Quad.  We were responsible for lighting the college’s menorah during Hanukkah.  And every year we “manned” the Israel booth during the college’s international festival.  My sophomore or junior year one of my professors came to the booth, slightly drunk and devouring tiramisu.  He stood before the booth and squinted at me, as if he was trying to decide what to make of me.  Slowly he opened his mouth and asked me how, as a woman, I could possibly support a place as “mean-spirited” and “apartheid” as Israel.  I was supposed to be caring, he said.  I represented man’s better nature, he said, but here I was, supporting Israel.

The inherent sexism of his comments revealed a lot about the professor and his prejudices.  If my professor had actually been to Israel he might have seen women in uniform working alongside the men.  He’d know that Israel takes equality very seriously.  There are Muslim, Arab-Israeli MKs who criticize the government and her policies freely, with no fear of retribution (except at the hands of voters).  If my professor had seriously considered it he would have realized that the Muslim world has a problem—a woman problem—a freedom problem.  My professor proved that the Muslim world does not have a monopoly on sexists, but at least on campus he was free to speak his mind.  Maybe if he challenged his preconceptions he could have learned something.

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When I was 11, like many Floridians, I got to experience my first hurricane.  It wasn’t much of a hurricane and we really weren’t frightened of it.  My dog actually wanted to spend time in the driving rain (dogs are weird).  We were unlucky to be in the path of the worst of the storm, but that also meant that the eye of the storm passed directly over my house.  The rain stopped, the sun got brighter (it never completely emerged from the clouds), and for the first time in hours things were quiet.  It was unnerving, especially when I remembered that another half of the storm was on its way.  That’s the situation Israel is in now.

Israel is in a unique situation, because it is the avowed enemy of so many in the Middle East, but it is the only country not tearing itself to pieces.  Sure, Israel is facing social issues, but they’re the kind of thing that democracies regularly weather.  Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Tunisia are all struggling with factionalism.  Syria is about to fly apart.  Egypt has lost control of the Sinai despite deploying thousands of soldiers.   It would not surprise me to see Lebanon follow suit.  The Palestinians are struggling to do anything.  In the midst of this is Israel, comparatively quiet and calm.

We can’t forget that Israel is in the eye of the storm, but the storm will pass.  It will bring with it more war.  I expect to see Israel forced to pick and choose among various factions.  To counteract Hezbollah in Lebanon Israel may turn to the resurgent Falangists.  Any tribes in the Sinai that offer the possibility of peace will get Israeli support.  This is necessary if Israel is to survive.  For a period of time she will have bloody borders, but when all is said and done she will survive.  And she may stand alone as the only country that remains intact from the Arab Spring.  Imagine what it will say to the world when they see dictatorships and religious fanatics fall, but the region’s sole democracy standing tall.

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