Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Ashkelon is a beautiful coastal city on the Mediterranean Sea. The original ancient port goes back more than 4000 years and archeological finds show it was ruled over the course of millennia by the Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Assyrians, Persians, Hasmoneans, Greeks and Romans and was destroyed and left uninhabited by the Muslims. The Biblical story of the Israelite Judge Samson and the Philistine woman Delila took place here. Just a mile from where I live in the modern Israeli city, stands the oldest known stone archway in the world.
Today, our town of 130,000 residents is probably better known as the city that has been targeted with nearly 1000 GRAD and Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip by Hamas, the terrorist organization which rules Gaza. Over 4,000 missiles have been launched this week at Israel.
My wife and I have spent most of our time during the past 12 days living and sleeping on the floor in the shelter room we are lucky enough to have in our apartment. Until one has heard the nearly constant red-alert sirens and felt the impact of explosions as either Iron Dome downs missiles, or as missiles penetrate and hit homes and buildings, one will likely not understand the reality of Ashkelon and Israel.
As we have watched how this war has been portrayed in the American and other foreign media, we’ve felt increasingly isolated. Israel can do no right. The comedian John Oliver’s recent diatribe against Israel is paradigmatic. It claimed that taking down a building after warning its residents to leave because the building houses terrorist activities, is somehow a war crime. At the same time, Oliver shouts in fury that Israel’s response to Hamas’ rockets is disproportionate because Israel has the Iron Dome defense system and Gaza doesn’t. It isn’t fair, claims Oliver, because Israel’s airstrikes are effective while Hamas’ thousands of rockets often don’t reach their target.
Why did Israel develop the Iron Dome defense system? The short answer is that Hamas would have destroyed more than half of Israel this week without it. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both have stockpiled Iranian supplied missiles and explosive drones with one purpose in mind—to kill Israeli civilians. They are the reason Israel had to invest in developing Iron Dome. Arguing that this makes the fight unfair is like saying that a cop when fired upon, uses disproportionate response in shooting back, because he or she is wearing a protective vest.
Israel’s response has in actuality, been disproportionately weak. A proportional response would have been to answer the rocket attacks on civilian populations with the same. Proportional response then, would mean Israel should have rained down 4000 bombs on Gaza indiscriminately, instead of investing in surgical airstrikes to avoid civilian casualties.
The illogic of the accusation of disproportionate response would be laughable if it weren’t reflective of an inherent prejudice against the Jewish State. Oliver’s claims are shocking in their absurdity, yet they are no different than what we’ve heard in Congress from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, or on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as at mass anti-Israel demonstrations throughout the world.
The only way Israel might win favor in the eyes of most of her accusers, would be to be eradicated. That is the major plank in Hamas’ charter—to eradicate Israel and Jews from the world.
Those who wave Palestinian flags in demonstrations against Israel’s actions in this war, chanting “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”, or twist the truth as do Oliver, Tlaib and Omar, give implicit and explicit support to Hamas’ terrorism and thus to its major backer, Iran. “The river” is the Jordan river. “The sea”, is the Mediterranean. What is between the Jordan and the Mediterranean? Israel. The chant is for Israel’s destruction.
John Oliver, pray that Israel succeeds in this fight, because Israel is the canary in the coal mine of ideological Islamic terrorism. Telling the canary to shut up, will lead to disaster in the Western world.
I pray that someday, people will come visit the ancient and modern Israeli city of Ashkelon in peace, and no-one will be thinking of rockets, bombs and mortars but rather of history, the Bible and the beach.
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Rabbi Ronald D. Price is the executive vice president emeritus of the UTJ. He served as executive vice president for 26 years, beginning with the founding of the UTJ in 1985 and as the founding dean of the Institute of Traditional Judaism, the Metivta, from 1990 until his retirement in 2011.
A native of Washington, D.C., Rabbi Price graduated from the University of Maryland in 1971 with a BA in Political Science. He received an MA in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1975 and was ordained there in 1977. From 1977 until moving to Israel in 1980, Rabbi Price was Assistant Dean of the Rabbinical School of JTS. Following the break with the Conservative movement, Rabbi Price took his advanced ordination in 1992 under Rav David Weiss Halivni, reish metivta of the Institute of Traditional Judaism.
A highpoint in Rabbi Price’s career came early in his tenure with the UTJ. In 1988, when the “Who is a Jew?” crisis arose and threatened the relationship of Israel to the North American Jewish community, Rabbi Price, on behalf of the UTJ, authored a proposal for a halakhic as well as political solution to the “Who is a Jew?” issue which gained much support in all segments of the community and was praised publicly by the government of Israel as “a bright light at a dark time”.
Rabbi Price also authored the first halakhic living will which continues to be used by individuals and hospitals around North America and is part of the Elder Care Law Library, housed in Washington, D.C. He has lectured extensively and published many articles on subjects such as pluralism in the Jewish community; the right to die and Jewish tradition; creating traditional communities; the realignment of religious Judaism; and the risks and benefits of outreach to the intermarried.
Rabbi Price has dedicated his life to developing ways of making traditional Judaism accessible to the lay community and is the creator of the video education curriculum, “Taking the MTV Challenge: Media and Torah Values,” a Jewish response to media which has been taught in more than 300 institutions across the denominational spectrum around the world.
Rabbi Price lives in Ashqelon, Israel with his wife Tziporah.