DV Journal

Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets in Center City Philadelphia Sunday night, shouting their opposition to Israel, calling for “intifada,” and demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Some went to the University of Pennsylvania campus, a site of earlier demonstrations. Others headed to Goldie, a Jewish-owned restaurant serving Israeli food on Samson Street.

They chanted, “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”

The protest was organized by the Philly Palestine Coalition, which earlier this year called for a boycott of Zionist-owned businesses, including Goldie and other restaurants also owned by Israeli-born chef Mike Solomonov.

The protest drew quick condemnation from Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.). “Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism — not a peaceful protest. A restaurant was targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli. This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history,” Shapiro posted on X.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) added his own post. “They could be protesting Hamas. They could be protesting Hamas’ systematic rape of Israeli women and girls or demanding the remaining hostages be immediately released. Instead, they targeted a Jewish restaurant. It’s pathetic and rank antisemitism.”

The protest in Philadelphia is just one of many from pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activists, some openly antisemitic, in the wake of Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 terror attack carried out by Hamas. It claimed the lives of some 1,200 people in Israel, injured thousands more, and resulted in some 240 people taken hostage.

Rabbi Lance Sussman, author and rabbi emeritus of Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, said he supports free speech. “However, targeting individuals and businesses solely based on their personal identities borders on harassment and a violation of their rights. There are many ‘public squares’ and spaces in our area to share one’s message. Good citizenship is a multidimensional responsibility.”

“Hamas seeks to carry out a genocide against Israel—that is their explicit intent, and intention is one of the two criteria that the Jewish refugee from Nazi Europe included when coining the term genocide to describe the Holocaust. Were Hamas to surrender, there would be no more Palestinian bloodshed precisely because Israel has no genocidal intentions. The perversion of language and ethics is truly Orwellian,” said Rav Shai Cherry, senior rabbi at Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park.

Michael Solomonov, a chef and restaurateur who co-owns Goldie and several other Philadelphia eateries, declined to comment.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said, “Additionally, I called Michael Solomonov this morning to share that I’m buying lunch for my SEPA team at Goldie in solidarity with him and his team.”

Dave McCormick, Casey’s Republican opponent, said, “This ‘protest’ is despicable — antisemitism, plain and simple. I call on everyone who cares about our Jewish community to support Goldie’s. There are more supporters who care than antisemites who hate.”

Shapiro added, “I’ve communicated tonight with @Mike_Solomonov and his team at Goldie to share our support, and Lori and I look forward to breaking bread there with them again soon.”

In the aftermath of the October attack, Solomonov, who immigrated to the U.S. from Israel, donated a day of the proceeds from all his restaurants to the Friends of @unitedhatzalahofisrael, a volunteer emergency medical services program in Israel.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia also condemned the protests. “As we have said before, this tactic only serves to intimidate, isolate, and scapegoat Israeli and Jewish businesses, further contributing to the alarming levels of hate against Jews nationwide,” it said in a statement. “We stand with Gov. Shapiro and other local officials in denouncing this protest for what it is: blatant antisemitism. We call on the community to counter this hatred by increasing their support to Jewish-owned and pro-Israel businesses by purchasing gift cards from them as gifts for the holidays.”

The Philadelphia Free Palestine Coalition announced Sunday’s protest on its Facebook page.

Bryan Fuller wrote on it to the group: “My two best friends are Islamic. My husband is Hindu. I have hundreds of Jewish and Islamic friends. We are celebrating my husband’s 46th birthday at a restaurant owned by an Islamic couple so our two best friends can eat halal meat. I am disgusted by your actions last night. I have always supported Gaza and Israel. Your HATE is unbearable to watch. As a devout liberal, you do not represent me and the majority. Israel is often wrong. So is Gaza. The hate you showed last night towards a Jewish business is disgusting. I would NEVER target an independent business because of the acts of people I don’t agree with. I will personally frequent every establishment you attempt to destroy. So will my Islamic, Jewish, and Christian friends. Hate has no home!”

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(This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty)

The School District of Philadelphia says it is not offering teachers a professional development course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after a screenshot detailing such an offering was widely circulated on social media sites earlier this week.

The district’s careful and terse wording in response to Broad + Liberty’s request for comment did not make clear whether the course was axed in response to political concerns, or if the district had ever intended for such a course to be available.

The screenshot shows the professional development “event” carried the title, “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.”

The course description said, “This professional development will help teachers better understand the history of the on going [sic] conflict of Palestine and Israel, the colonization of Palestine, and the current genocide in Gaza and the West Bank,” wrongly implying that Israel was carrying out a genocide as opposed to being the target of one.

“Yesterday [Monday], the title of a professional development training was posted to the District’s internal portal for employees,” Monique Braxton, the district’s deputy chief of communications, said in an email. “The title was not an accurate depiction of the Districts position relating to the Middle East and was immediately removed.”

Broad + Liberty followed up by asking if the seminar was still available, or if the only issue was re-wording the course title and description.

“The professional development course isn’t being offered,” Braxton said in response.

The controversy comes as the current Israel-Hamas war nears its eighth week.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia was quick to condemn the language, even if the course was not an offering.

“The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia strongly condemns the anti-Israel language used to describe a School District of Philadelphia professional development course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Jason Holtzman, director of the Federation’s community relations council.

“While we recognize the district’s efforts to remove this course from its portal, misinformation posted on the web has a permanent footprint that emboldens antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric. We urge the district to firmly denounce the problematic nature of the language used in this course to make it clear that they are committed to building a safe schooling environment for Jewish students and teachers,” he concluded.

The controversy emerges as rhetoric, particularly by educators at all levels, has been scrutinized in the wake of the October 7 surprise terror attacks by Hamas.

Earlier this month, Colonial School District board member Dr. Jamina Clay resigned after public outcry over a social media post.

Dr. Clay, however, “will continue to serve as assistant superintendent for the School District of Philadelphia, where she oversees ten schools,” according to 6 ABC.

“The Board of Education Policy 320 states that ‘employees are protected by the First Amendment when speaking on a matter of public concern that is not part of their job duties.’ The views and opinions expressed in Dr. Clay’s Facebook post do not reflect the position, opinion or views of the School District of Philadelphia,” said a spokesperson for SPD in response to the Clay issue.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick is calling out incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) over his past support for the Iran deal and his silence on new cash the Biden administration is allowing to go to the Islamist republic.

During a podcast interview with DVJournal, McCormick reiterated his support for Israel and its military response to the Hamas terrorist attack launched from Gaza.

“The attack on Israel was evil in its purest form, absolute barbarism,” said McCormick, who served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division during the Gulf War.

“And it’s been a test, really,” he said. “And that test, well, many have failed the test with moral ambiguity. You see that with college presidents (and) with some members of Congress. I think even Sen. Casey has been very weak on this compared to, ironically, Sen. (John) Fetterman, who has taken a much stronger stance.”

“So it’s really important that we stand tall with both the moral clarity of what happened and our support for Israel. And so we must support Israel. We support it with the intelligence, with military capability it needs, but also with moral clarity.

“In one form or another, there needs to be a path to support for Israel. And that support can’t be held up for any reason,” said McCormick.

He also assailed the ongoing protests and antisemitic incidents on college campuses around the country, including in the Delaware Valley.

“I think what’s happened on our college campuses since the horrific attack on Israel, the barbarism, (is) an eye-opener,” said McCormick. “I mean, it has been an absolute eye-opener. Because it’s been explicit antisemitism. But more than that, it’s been a reflection of the fact that American institutions of higher education, the Ivy Leagues in particular, but generally speaking, have lost their way.”

He added, “The lack of moral clarity on the difference between right and wrong, the difference between merit and not merit. The difference between America and the exceptional contribution it’s made to the world, the uniqueness of America, with all its faults, which is still undeniably the greatest country in the history of the world in terms of bringing people out of poverty.

“The lack of clarity on that, the hijacking of all that’s great about our country, I mean we saw it all. It’s not just the antisemitism. Of course, the antisemitism is horrific and indefensible. But it’s part of a broader thing where all the basic assumptions about what made our country and our society the greatest in the world are under siege,” said McCormick.

“And so I hope that this terrible turn of events, we can have some good happen,” said McCormick. “Which is, you see a lot of people, people in the finance community, people in general, a lot of Jewish Americans pulling back and saying, ‘Oh my Lord, I want no affiliation with what I’m seeing. Those are not my people.’ And I think this is showing a huge division within the Democratic party…

“What person who is a clear-thinking person could look at those people protesting and chanting ‘Death to Israel’ and say, ‘Those are the people that are in my party.’ So, this is hopefully an inflection point of a recalibration of our institutions of higher education. I’d like to see some people get fired, to be honest with you.”

Asked if that includes University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, who has been criticized as slow to act as antisemitic incidents on campus mounted, McCormick replied, “Of course. Anybody who showed in this moment of crisis that they couldn’t step up and be clear about good and bad, evil versus not evil, I think is not qualified to lead.”

National Republicans are targeting Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey over his votes to prop up the Islamic government of Iran, which is widely believed to be a sponsor of terrorist groups, including Hamas.

“Senate Democrats sent our tax dollars to Iran, which used that money to bankroll terrorist groups like Hamas. As the nation witnesses the unfolding conflict in the Middle East, one thing is certain: these senators can’t be trusted to keep America safe,” said National Republican Senate Campaign spokesman Philip Letsou.

The ad references a 2015 vote cast by Casey to uphold the so-called “Iran Deal” brokered by President Barack Obama that sent billions of dollars to the terror-sponsoring nation. The results of the deal immediately benefited Tehran.

“The Obama administration secretly arranged a plane delivery of $400 million in cash on the same day Iran…formally implemented the nuclear deal,” CNN reported. “The money was flown into Iran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros, and other currencies.”

Casey, who is seeking reelection in 2024, said he has stiffened his stance toward Iran. He touts his reversal of support for President Joe Biden’s allowing $6 billion in funds to be released to Iran. Casey now wants the funding refrozen in light of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“These funds should remain frozen until we can determine whether Iran played a role in the attack and what the appropriate U.S. response should be,” Casey said.

For Republicans, it looks like politics at work, not a policy to contain Iran and its pro-terrorism policies.

Republican Dave McCormick, who is challenging the Pennsylvania Democrat in 2024, said on X, “The United States must work with our allies to use every tool at our disposal to constrain Iran’s ability to support its terrorist proxies.”

On Oct. 9, McCormick wrote a letter to Casey asking him to tell Biden to keep that $6 billion out of the hands of the Iranian regime.

“I call on you to join me in urging President Biden to block Iran’s access to $6 billion in recently unfrozen assets,” McCormick wrote to Casey. “And if President Biden will not do this, I call on you to introduce legislation to put a hold on these funds.”

In the same letter, McCormick asked Casey to help stop the flow of Iranian oil to China and others that provide “a lifeline to the regime,” allowing it to garner billions.

“The administration must fully implement U.S. sanctions on Iran, especially in the energy sector, to force Tehran to make difficult decisions about support to its terrorist proxies,” McCormick wrote.

According to the Republican Jewish Coalition, Casey has a record of being soft on Iran.

That group said Casey “did not support legislation to impose sanctions on Iran and Hamas that would have stopped money from flowing into terrorist coffers. On three occasions in 2015, he voted to approve the Obama administration’s nuclear deal, lifting sanctions on Iran and giving it access to billions of dollars. Some of that money funded Hamas’ training and arming for last month’s attack.

“Mr. Casey did not support the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021, which would have imposed sanctions on Hamas. That bill would have denied terrorist groups access to loans or credit guaranteed by American financial institutions and penalized foreign countries that gave money to Hamas.

“In 2019, Mr. Casey criticized Israel for barring Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from visiting. In addition, Mr. Casey failed to support the Combating BDS Acts of 2021 and 2023. These bills would have allowed state and local governments to divest from entities that support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. The movement seeks to delegitimize Israel and destroy it through economic and diplomatic means,” the coalition said.

Israel is at war, and the African-American Church finds itself silent again. Why?

Innocent Israelis, including infants and toddlers, have been murdered. Women, children, and the elderly have been violently taken hostage, all at the hands of Hamas, a terrorist organization.

If any organization or group of people should be decrying the atrocities of these brutal killings from Hamas, it should be the African-American church. If any organization or group of people should be standing with unwavering support for Israel during these difficult days, it should be the African-American church. We are compelled to do so.

Unfortunately, many African-Americans pastors and leaders have a mixed level of apathy and resistance toward Israel as well as empathy for the Palestinian struggle, often making a comparison to the civil rights era. To add, some consider the African-American community to be the most antisemitic group in America today. From the historic “Hymietown” comments of Rev. Jesse Jackson to the self-proclaimed “atoned and promised one” of Louis Farrakhan, there is a disdained hatred and mistrust for a people that God Himself commanded the church to love and bless. High profile as they may be, these individuals who express anti-Israel or antisemitic attitudes are not speaking for the entire African-American community.

That may not be clear to the casual observer because many African Americans are unaware of the intricacies of Israel’s struggle for survival.

Why should the African-American church not be silent during Israel’s war with Palestine? Why should the church pray for and support Israel?

Here are three compelling motives.

Biblically, here is God’s promise—”I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1–3)

Morally as Christians, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Jewish people for giving us the patriarchs– Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The prophets–Elijah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah… and the Holy Bible.

Theologically as the African-American church, we are often seen and known as the first line and defenders of the faith against the teaching of false doctrine and apostasy (such as the dangers of Replacement Theology and antisemitism) are often associated with the Christian church.

Dr. Martin Luther King saw that, like African Americans, the children of Israel suffered at the hands of hostile neighbors filled with hate and bigotry. He knew that “Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.” Somewhere along the way, too many of our leaders forgot what he preached.

Therefore, may it be resolved and reinforced today:

Israel has a right to its own ancient land that the God of the Bible gave it, and the capital of that God-given land is Jerusalem, the eternal and holy city of the Jews. Like any other country, Israel has a right to defend and protect herself from the ongoing threats and attacks from such enemies as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the dictators of Iran.

Sixty years ago, the Jewish people stood with us during our hour of need, not because they wanted something in return, but because God and human reason compelled them to do so. Now is the Jewish state’s hour of need. Israel is at war. Israel is under assault by terrorists seeking to kill its people, and propagandists seeking to undermine its legitimacy.

For the African-American church, there needs to be a bold and courageous stand for the Jewish state, not because we want anything in return, but because God and human reason compel us to do so.

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When teaching about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I leave accounts of suffering aside.  Such accounts, regardless of whose suffering is being described, are inherently partial.  Neither side has a monopoly on misery. In terms of pain and sorrow, there truly is a moral equivalency between Israelis and Palestinians.

There is no moral equivalency, however, between the two sides’ motivations for their actions.  Hamas rejects a two-state solution because it would recognize the existence of a sovereign Jewish state in what was once the abode of Islam, dar al-Islam.  The one-state solution of Hamas requires the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel.  Israel rightly refuses to be an accomplice to its own demise.

What shocks my students the most is to learn that there was never a State of Palestine.  The only independent states that ever existed on that land are the ones described in the Bible—the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  The names of Judah and Israel were expunged by the Romans after the Jews’ second revolt against their harsh colonial rule in the second century.  They renamed what became an administrative province Syria-Palestina to echo the Israelites’ ancient enemies, long since vanquished, the Philistines.  They also exiled the Jews who had survived the bloody suppression of those revolts.

Jews are not colonizers.  You can’t colonize your own homeland.  In the late-19th century, the age of nationalism, the Zionist movement asserted the Jewish historical claim as the indigenous people of Zion.  The Arabs who had subsequently made that area their home saw the influx of European Jews as alien colonizers.  Their perception was understandable, but wrong.

When Britain used its international mandate to unilaterally break apart Palestine in 1922, granting 80 percent of the whole to the Hashemite Kingdom to create Trans-Jordan (now called Jordan), the Zionists expected the remaining territory west of the Jordan River to become the national home of the Jewish people.  That’s what was promised to them by the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and internationally sanctioned by the League of Nations in 1921.  The Zionists had purchased the land, developed the land, and then fought for the land.  Throughout history those are the only three methods of acquiring real estate.  The Jews did all three.  Repeatedly.

Although Israel was eventually offered significantly less by the United Nations partition plan of 1947, Israel accepted.  The Arabs, alas, rejected the UN’s offer to create a second Arab state in Palestine.  Since then, Israel has fought three wars for its very existence:  1948’s War of Independence, 1967’s 6-Day War, and 1973’s Yom Kippur War.  In the intervening years, Israel made significant progress in achieving acceptance among its neighbors beginning with Egypt and Jordan and extending to the countries of the Abraham Accords.  As normalization with Saudi Arabia became an imminent possibility, Hamas lashed out.

When Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to accept Israel’s existence, Israel returned the land it had conquered during those defensive wars.  Egypt got the Sinai, but Sadat was assassinated by a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.  In the eyes of these Islamists, recognition of and rapprochement with Israel is a capital crime.

Fundamentalist Islamist regimes and organizations, like Iran, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Isis, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Brotherhood, and Hamas, are engaged in a jihad that brooks no compromise.  Their problem is not with the Israeli occupation, it is with the existence of a sovereign Jewish state.  Thus, when Israeli military operations to incapacitate Hamas inevitably, and tragically, cause civilian deaths, there is no moral equivalency.  Hamas murders civilians to murder civilians; when Israel unintentionally kills civilians, it is to eliminate the threat of Hamas committing additional barbaric atrocities in the future.

For many of us, our moral reflex is to show mercy on the innocents caught in the crosshairs.  But a ceasefire before Hamas is extirpated would amount to nothing but a brief interlude allowing Hamas to rearm with even more deadly weapons.  In our imperfect world, moral clarity dictates the eradication of Hamas for the possibility of peace.

“Never forget?” In Philadelphia today, it’s hard to remember.

Maybe it’s the obnoxious sit-ins by pro-Palestinian protestors that disrupted traffic at 30th Street this week. Perhaps the troubling chants of “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” wafted across Rittenhouse Square.

Whatever the cause, it’s hard to remember there was a very brief moment when people in the Delaware Valley actually found a bit of their humanity and roundly condemned the terrorist attacks against innocent Jews in Israel.

As heartening as they were brief, the social media messages, pronouncements from the White House, and comments from kings and commoners alike seemed to confirm that when innocent babies are murdered, their mothers raped, and their grandmothers shot through the head, the human thing was to mourn them.

That is why the people who took the side of Hamas in those first crucial moments stand out to me as particularly vile and inhuman. Now, as the tide has turned towards condemnation of Israel and outright antisemitism, the desire to highlight the plight of Gazans and minimize the pain of Jews is common.

But on Oct. 8 and 9, in the hours and days after the genocidal assault on innocent concert-goers and families, the thought that a person with even the most minimal understanding of persecution and torture could actually come out and support Hamas was unthinkable.

Unthinkable, that is, until we were presented with the ugly facts.

George Donnelly, the chief of staff of state Sen. Nikil Saval, found comfort and solidarity in certain social media accounts that immediately blamed the victims of Hamas for their deaths. Donnelly retweeted posts that suggested the Israelis were guilty of their own demise because they were living on Palestinian land and taunted the Jewish victims by saying, “What y’all think decolonization meant?” Donnelly apparently agreed, since he retweeted the accounts, that one way to obtain Palestinian autonomy was to murder Jews.

It is unclear whether Donnelly is still on Saval’s payroll, although given the senator’s fellow travelers and his purposeful solidarity with the Palestinian people, I suspect he got a promotion. While the senator has every right to choose the people who staff his office and support his mission, the old adage of “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas” is appropriate in this context.

The fact that a sitting state senator is aligned with a man who openly supported the massacre of innocents is beyond troubling. His momentary concessions that “I deplore and condemn the murder of innocent civilians by Hamas” rings hollow, given the fact that he has since aligned himself with protestors seeking the elimination of Israel.

For example, Saval recently joined that sit-in at 30th Street, demanding a ceasefire. Saval is a fairly observant fellow, so you would think that he knew there already was a ceasefire, but it ended on Oct. 7 when Palestinian terrorists murdered babies. In this context, a ceasefire means only one thing: stop going after the terrorists who targeted innocent Jews and who are using their own citizens as human shields. That is what a ceasefire would mean. It would also allow Hamas to benefit from its own evil agenda and convince its allies, Hezbollah and Iran, that attacks will be met by appeasement.

Anyone who believes that hasn’t been watching Israel operate over the past 75 years.

I know that there are a lot of misguided folks in the Delaware Valley who are playing the “both sides are at fault” game. I know that there are people who will clamor about Islamophobia when the only places of worship being defaced these days are synagogues, and the only university students being threatened are Jewish. I know that there are men and women who will rip down the posters of missing Jewish children because they believe that unless the face of every Palestinian child is posted as well, justice demands that we ignore the Jewish hostages.

I know these people exist, and I try to block them from my airspace, but that’s not possible when the person you want to block is your state senator.

What I can do is continue to point out to his fellow constituents the sort of people he chooses to work with, associate with, and represent him to the public. One of those people apparently mistakes massacres for legitimate political action.

Hamas may have attacked Israel to dislodge Arabic support for expanding the Abraham Accords. But much of the global community has rallied around Israel, while the Middle Eastern partners to the pact have vowed to prevent an escalation.

Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords on September 15, 2000. It’s not a peace treaty, as those countries have never had hostilities. Indeed, they have long had informal trade ties. The entente expands those business ties and incorporates a security protocol as well.

International commerce is the cornerstone of world peace, opening diplomatic relations among nations and business interests. In the case of the UAE and Israel, billions of dollars are trading hands, cementing a lasting bond.

And now Saudi Arabia is ready to sign on. Oman, Morocco, and Kuwait could eventually follow suit. Together, they provide a defensive force against Iran, threatening regional stability.

“These countries have so many common interests,” said Bruce Gurfein, chief executive of the Dubai-based investment fund Connect LLC. “They started dating, and now their relationship is public.”

Gurfein, 47, is originally from New York City with strong Jewish ties to Israel. He has spent the last 28 years facilitating business deals amongst the Middle Eastern nations, noting that the Arabic countries have welcomed him with open arms.

The UAE and Israel have cooperated to deter aggression since 1991, but they are now open about it. As such, they exchange military intelligence and cyber defenses. Energy, too, is a vital component of the pact, potentially having the Israelis buy oil from the UAE. And Israelis love Dubai’s hotels and beaches.

President Joe Biden brought the Saudis on board, who seek security guarantees and to be an international business destination. Already, Israel buys metals and cement from the Saudis, who deploy Israeli cyber technology and drones for civilian use. Meantime, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called the Hamas attack “an act of sheer evil.”

However, the Saudi educational system has ingrained its population with anti-Israeli sentiments. Biden, who seeks to repair U.S.-Saudi relations, explained that step one must include normalizing relations with Israel.

“I hope that Saudia Arabia and Israel take this slowly and make it a long-lasting relationship,” said Gurfein. “Give the people time to get to know each other. Let the business relationships get established.”

The executive asked a taxi driver what he thought of Saudi participation in the Abraham Accords, who responded that he is “officially” obliged to hate Israel. But, “unofficially,” he lamented that hatred of others is not in his blood. No doubt, it will take time to change the broader Saudi mindset.

It’s doable. Consider that Saudi women have traditionally been subservient to men. But women are now permitted to run businesses, and they are responsible for 70 percent of the start-ups in the country — unheard of five years ago.

Egypt and Jordan also have economic links to Israel. Israel exports about $236 million worth of goods to Egypt, while Israel buys agricultural and chemical products from Egypt. Meantime, Israel provides Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water annually while Jordan exports solar power to Israel.

It’s hard to hate someone after shaking their hand and fulfilling promises.

Are these business and economic ties strong enough to overcome the threat of war? None of the agreements relegates the Palestinian cause and a potential two-state solution where Israel exists peacefully with Palestine. The treaty only enhances that possibility, allowing all sides to voice their concerns at the highest levels. The Palestinians are not an afterthought.

The Abraham Accords could come undone for a variety of reasons. But don’t underestimate the economic and security considerations driving an expansion of the deal — a force that should overpower all political obstacles.

The tragic circumstances unfolding in Israel cannot be overstated.

Mankind has a long and often unpleasant history in which the innocent suffer under the tyranny of the worst of humanity – corruption, power, brutality, cruelty, meanness, and more.

A shocking but not unexpected reaction to these events has unfolded on college campuses.

The knee-jerk reaction of 31 Harvard student organizations unquestioningly sided with Hamas, despite evidence of human atrocities. Harvard was not alone. Across the country, students from higher education learning institutions, including Penn, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, City University of New York, Tufts, and Portland State University, to name a few, came out in unquestioned support of Hamas.

That college students would organize a protest to make their voices heard is to be expected. What is shocking is the content of these protests.

USA Today, reporting on these campus developments, stated, “It’s hard to wrap your mind around: The social justice warriors on college campuses around America have come out in support of terrorists who last weekend raped and murdered and beheaded innocent people (including children, women and the elderly) in Israel.” In another post at the University of Washington, students were chanting, “There is only one solution. Intifada Revolution,” perhaps not fully recognizing or understanding the meaning and force of those words as calling for genocide against Jews.

Part of the shock associated with this student response is the apparent inability to think critically about a very complex circumstance with a very long history. In a reductionist approach, there must be an unquestioned binary of “good guys” versus “bad guys.” In tribalist rhetoric, atrocities committed by “our side” must be overlooked.

This binary perspective is in complete conflict with other cultural developments in which these same individuals insist that the issues are complex and nuanced.

For many years, people have been making observations and writing about the liberal indoctrination of college students by socialist progressives infiltrating campuses. Newsweek reported, “Dissent from, or even a lack of enthusiasm for, woke ideology is no longer tolerated on campus.” The Hoover Institution reported, “The politicization of higher education by activist professors and compliant university administrators deprives students of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and refine their minds.”

While the developments on college campuses are concerning, in and of itself, it does not tell the whole story.

How is it that bright-eyed, anxious, and aspiring freshmen arrive on campus so vulnerable to these progressive ideologies? What, if any, preparation in their secondary high school experience prepared them with critical thinking skills to be able to objectively evaluate these global developments?

The circumstantial evidence seems strong. It is unlikely that these students only started their journey – or slide – to an inability to think critically when they arrived on campus. That process began well before socialist, progressive professors began cultivating their liberal ideology. A recent Education Week article titled “Students Are Easily Duped Online. We Can Teach Them Better” touches on this subject.

It is quite possible that these students missed something substantive before they arrived at college – critical thinking skills. Either that or the same inculcation of progressive ideology affecting them once they reached college was initiated before they ever arrived. Canary Mission, a group that tracks “people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews” across the political spectrum, reported that “… 38 percent of the kinds of people who once marched around campus chanting about decolonization go on to teaching careers.”

In either case, we have not served these students well.

We have not served them well if their post-secondary college experience narrows their worldview and makes them see atrocities of rape, murder, and beheading of children, women, and the elderly as acceptable under any circumstances. We have not served them well when all they have is a post-modern perspective that there is no absolute truth and that even rape, murder, and beheading have a place in society. We have not served them well if we have not equipped them to help, serve, and love others, even those with whom they do not agree and may even vehemently disagree.

Secondary and post-secondary education has lost its way when it narrows students’ world by teaching them what to think rather than how to think.

Educators should reflect on the role they may have played in bringing students to a place where human atrocities do not evoke horror.

The unsettling response of students from across the country to the unfolding events in the Middle East shows that, for too long, this has been the case. We have not served our students or our country well.

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My daughter Roni Eshel is the girl next door. Nineteen years old, bubbly, exuberant and compassionate, a loving older sister, the eldest granddaughter of the family, she loves Taylor Swift and Harry Styles and all things pop. One of my last memories of Roni is the Maroon 5 concert we attended just a few weeks before October 7, when Hamas terrorists overwhelmed her army base.

“I’m OK, Mom,” Roni texted me during the attack. “Don’t worry, I’m in the safe room.”

I read this inconceivable message on my phone, and my heart began to race much quicker than my brain began to process.

“I’m OK Mom, don’t worry about me. I love you.” We have not heard anything from her since.

Roni is missing and could be among the more than 150 Israelis that Hamas abducted that fateful day. For over a week, her family has lived in agony as we endure the unimaginable: subjected to the whim of heinous terrorists who intentionally, mercilessly withhold all information about the condition of their hostages, we find ourselves unable to do anything but wait for any sign of life from our little girl, anything about her at all.

The terrorists, in their barbarism, specifically targeted female soldiers like Roni, defenseless in their beds. At the time of the attack, she was stationed in the communication center, a secure enclave. Unable to breach it, the terrorists resorted to setting it ablaze. Roni found herself in the company of a few fellow soldiers, some of whom managed to escape, some of whom were abducted and transported to Gaza. Several lost their lives, and several, like Roni, remain unaccounted for.

Every waking hour is consumed by the torment of being unable to protect my child. Where is Roni? Is she in pain? Is she frightened? Is she alone? Is she alive?

The fear of the unknown is a torture no family should ever bear. In addition to my husband and me, Roni’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and siblings are caught in a never-ending cycle of grief and uncertainty.

And this is not just our individual ordeal; it is the shared reality of hundreds upon hundreds of families across Israel. We feel the same pain countless Israelis who, like us, are grappling with a profound sense of loss and despair.

What we have witnessed and experienced since that Saturday has been nothing short of cold-blooded slaughter in its cruelest, most sadistic form. Innocent children were murdered in their homes, families burned alive, and countless young souls celebrating at a music festival for peace were herded into an open field and ruthlessly slaughtered en masse, with such extreme brutality that the bodies of many innocents were rendered entirely unrecognizable.

To be clear, Hamas did this to us — to my daughter — because its sole mission is to eradicate Jews. It acknowledges as much in its charter (article 7), which states that Hamas “Moslems fight Jews and kill them.”

At the same time, Hamas poses not a threat just to us but to everyone. After all, Hamas has used the same tactics against us that al-Qaeda and ISIS have used to wreak havoc worldwide.

Standing up to Hamas is not just a call to Israel. It is a call to the world to stand up against the global crisis of terrorism and extremism.

All corners of the civilized world must show unwavering solidarity with us in Israel to respect innocent lives and uphold the values and morals that allow for peace.

We implore people from all walks of life to raise their voices for Roni and the countless innocent Israeli hostages whose fates remain unknown. Independent of political beliefs, we can all find common ground in the need to protect all hostages and civilians.

Roni is, first and foremost, our beloved daughter. But now, she has also become a symbol of the universal longing for safety, for justice, and for the desire to live in peace. Her safe return and the safe return of all Israeli hostages would be a gesture to restoring faith in our shared humanity. It would also finally allow us to reunite with our baby girl.