It had been my intention to write this week about our friends and allies in Rockland’s LGBTQ+ community. As Pride month celebrations continue, let us not only passively recall but also actively assert that the identity and the rights that our community believes are being eroded - by the hate in our streets, outside our events, and on too many campuses - are also often under threat for other vulnerable communities. In Rockland, our ties run deep. Wishing our friends and partners happy Pride!

Events have a way of upending plans and demanding, in this case at least, a rewrite. So today I write to you about what is always on our minds but is now knocking at our doors.

The Intifada has been globalized.

It is neither passive, nor peaceful. It is not weak, nor ecumenical. It has a concentric circle of targets, and at the center of those is the worldwide Jewish community.

It has been galvanized by a well planned and executed strategy of demonization, delegitimization, and blood libel. Knowing that even after the shocking helpless hours of Hamas barbarity on 10/7 and the ensuing torture of months, years of captivity, the possibility of a military victory was beyond them, the strategy took another course.

• Harness the sights and images of civilians used (as proudly asserted by Hamas themselves) as cover for the butchers and torturers.
• Leverage the global left and (too) much of civil society who are inclined to an anti-colonial narrative by painting the indigenous Jewish people of Israel as imperialist colonizers.
• Leverage the anti-racist majorities in Western countries and in our own streets by falsely and ludicrously painting Israel as a white supremacist society even though most of its population (55%) is Sefardic, Mizrachi and Ethiopian.
• Utilize the funding and support given by Qatar and other Muslim Brotherhood infused regimes by allying with their local campus operatives, who foment antisemitic and anti-Zionist narratives on campus and in the media.
• Provoke animosity with the use of well worn antisemitic tropes, bringing to bear the violence that has characterized the antisemitism of the far right and of Islamist radicals among those now inclined and conditioned to hate because they feel they are targeting something or some group that epitomizes evil in 2025 - namely Israel and its supporters.
• Find a happy group of confederates among the global media and much of academia that has been conditioned by two generations of Soviet inspired anti Israel propaganda campaigns daring back to the 1970s. Weaponize their platforms by providing a false narrative that influences another generation, in new ways with ancient hatreds.
• Incite violence in places where Jews have usually been safe.
• Provoke despair, fear and weakness.

This is what we face today, and there's more of it coming. The horrific attacks in Washington, DC and Boulder, Colorado are not the height of it, but look rather more like the harbinger of the violent outcome our adversaries desire.

Six years ago, I met with my staff at a leading Israel Advocacy organization where I was the Executive Director, as we planned for the upcoming academic year. My message to them at the time was that our work was not going to be about countering this or that criticism of an Israeli policy, action, or position. No, it had become clear that the fundamental challenge was to the existence of a Jewish state in the Jewish ancestral homeland under any circumstances. Our identity, our indigeneity and our peoplehood was being challenged. And it was not only Israel that was targeted, it was the entire global Jewish community. I wish that I was wrong then.

I was 100% right. Now, though, added to the rhetorical challenge is a challenge to our physical safety.

These challenges are not simple. We can, we must confront them. That’s why we have continued to expand our Security Initiative, now working with a network of over 250 Jewish institutions in Rockland.

That’s why we and our partners engage with government and law enforcement, ensuring they understand our needs. This week I was in Washington, meeting with the Administration’s team confronting antisemitism. These included White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, NSC Counterterrorism Director Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Office of Jewish Affairs Director Martin Marks, and Department of Justice antisemitism Task Force Director Leo Terrell.

I came away from these meetings feeling that our concerns are understood, and resources were being brought to bear to address the challenge. Having also engaged with our local government and with the Governor, State Attorney General and the DHR Commissioner, I can say with confidence that we are not alone on any level. But we can not be complacent, or think that someone else will do the heavy lifting. We must maintain a level of awareness and alertness that is very difficult to sustain. We must also speak out, call out the pernicious apologists and supporters of the evil scourge of antisemitism wherever and whoever it comes from. We must vote, advocate, and step up to safeguard our community spaces.

You can do your part. Be proud of who we are and how our values have shaped our society. Be proud of our heritage and certain of our right to articulate, support and exercise our people’s right to self determination in our ancestral aboriginal homeland. And be aware that though small, we are a people that come together to take care of each other, hopefully every hour of every day, but certainly in times of crisis and challenge. Am Hanetzach Lo Mefached. As I have written here and elsewhere, The eternal people do not fear.

Shabbat Shalom