Death of Bin Laden

The celebrations of Osama Bin Laden's death caught me by surprise. At first I only thought of the disgusting visuals of Palestinians handing out sweets to their children when Israelis are murdered. I wondered if the obvious joy expressed by thousands of Americans were akin to that.

There is a story in the Talmud that describes God's anger at the angels when they celebrated the drowning of the Egyptians in the Sea of Reeds as they pursued the Israelites. Yet, the Israelites celebrated on the shore without such chastisement.

So, what's appropriate?

Lori Palatnik, writing on Aish.com, talks about "When Evel Falls." The article is too good to summarize here, so I am giving you the full article --

Is it proper to celebrate Osama Bin Laden's death?

As soon as I heard the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, I posted this wonderful news on my Facebook page as I waited to hear President Obama’s live announcement.

I immediately received many “likes” and comments of celebration. But one of my “friends” posted his displeasure that we were celebrating the death of someone. He quoted that when the sea engulfed and killed the Egyptians, God quieted the angels and told them not to cheer their death, that this was not something to celebrate.

Indeed, when the sea miraculously split, the seabed turned dry and the Jewish people walked safely to the other side. They then turned to watch the death of their enemy, as the now muddy seabed caught the Egyptian horses and chariot wheels.

The Jewish people broke into song, called “The Song of the Sea.” Miriam, with musical instruments, took the Jewish women aside and danced and sang in praise of God. And we are told that in heaven, the angels also broke into song. But the Almighty chastised the angels and said, “How can you sing when my people are dying?”

The Almighty chastised the angels and said, “How can you sing when my people are dying?”
Several questions arise. Why would God tell the angels not to celebrate and yet allow the Jews to sing? And God’s people were dying because He himself killed them!

What God is saying to the angels is that this is not a happy day for Him. He did not create the Egyptians for evil, but they chose evil, and now evil had to be wiped out. But the Jewish people had suffered at the hand of the Egyptians and they not only had the right to celebrate, they must celebrate.

The Shabbat before Purim is called Parshat Zachor, the Torah portion where we “remember.” What is it that we are recalling each year? Amalek, the arch enemy of the Jewish people who attacked us in the desert, and whose descendents rise in each generation to try and destroy us. Remembering Amalek fulfills one of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah. But why would we forget? Because there is a part of us that wants to rationalize evil away, and not to accept that it actually exists. We give it political reasoning or economic rationalization. But the Torah tells us that it does exist, we must not to close our eyes to it, and we are to do everything that we can to eradicate it from the world.

We recently sang “V’hi sh'amda” from our haggadahs:

For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!"

Mr. Yisrael Yitzhak Cohen, a special Jew who lives in Toronto and who we had the privilege of living near for many years, is a survivor of Auschwitz and told us dramatic and horrific stories of what he experienced. He shared with us that when the Nazis tortured them in the camps they would point their guns and shout, “Sing Jews, sing.” And “V’hi shamda” is what they sang.

As the Nazis left the camp, killing every Jew they could find on the way out, Mr. Cohen, barely a skeleton, laid down among the corpses and feigned to be dead. When the Nazis were gone, he and a friend stumbled into the kitchen, found some flour and water and began to bake it into something they could eat. As they sat on the floor waiting to remove the matzah, American soldiers entered the room. They were liberated on Passover Sheni, 30 days after Seder night.

Mr. Cohen was a man who knew evil when he saw it, and would never forget. When our second son, Moshe, was born, we asked Mr. Cohen to honor us as the sandek [akin to godfather], to hold our son as he entered the covenant.

In havdalah we celebrate the ability to distinguish between light and darkness. In life we must know what is good and what is evil. Yes, we are commanded to remember that there is evil in the world, and not only are we allowed to celebrate when it is destroyed, we must.

As King Solomon wrote:

To every thing there is a season… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance … A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/ci/s/When_Evil_Falls.html


Let's all pray there will be no further need for celebrations such as these.

NATO under fire after firing on Libya

The New York Times reports today on the use of disproportionate force. This time, however, the butt of the story is not Israel, long accused of that in its wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, but NATO.

The charge has been levied by Russia. The same folks who brought us the Chechen wars.

NATO’s campaign of airstrikes against Libya came under the most intense criticism yet on Sunday, with Russian officials accusing the alliance of using “disproportionate” force in civilian areas a day after a strike on central Tripoli was reported to have killed a son and three grandchildren of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

NATO obviously denied the charge.

To my mind, NATO must ask and answer two questions- Does it want Qaddafi out of power? And what price is it willing to pay?

Read the full story.

Cohen- Price of Delusion. Libya and Qadaffi

Roger Cohen’s column in the Times begins with his take on Qaddafi-

“Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is a vain man. Like the other Arab dinosaurs he has his dyed hair, his designer shades, his spoiled children and his compound full of sycophants. He doesn’t want, one day, to be dragged from a rat hole like Saddam
Hussein or hauled from a bunker like the Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo.”

“Qaddafi is not mad,” he writes, but deluded. And who or what helped along his delusion?

Qaddafi is a child of the United Nations, that austere body in New York City that gives the plenum to people like Qaddafi, Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad. It is the U.N. and its various councils that empower people like Qaddafi by giving them the veneer of legitimacy that allows them to murder their own people and to sponsor terrorism.

And of the rebels?

“Right now, three squabbling generals jostle for control. The Brits, holed up in a Benghazi hotel compound with one of the generals, are trying to help with that. The United States is offering nonlethal stuff worth millions of dollars: body armor, canteens, uniforms, wire cages for sandbags that can be used to make walls.”

But you sense from Cohen that he blames the U.S. for the rebel’s lack of progress in ousting Qaddafi.

“This embryonic force is not going to defeat Qaddafi in the foreseeable future. Nor can it, alone, apply enough pressure on him for his entourage to see the writing on the wall and act accordingly. That burden falls to NATO. But NATO hesitated as President Obama and America drew back. It is now trying to correct that lapse by escalating operations to take out supply and communications lines.”

I say that the U.N. created Qaddafi, let it now get rid of him. Small chance of that happening as its fecklessness is on display as it considers adding Syria to the UN’s Human Rights Council.

What will be in Libya will be. And I do not hold out much hope of a democratic future.

The full article is here.

New violence in Israel troubles a father's sore heart in N.J. | NJ.com

My most recent column appeared in the Star-Ledger on Friday, April 15, 2011, New violence in Israel troubles a father's sore heart in N.J.

Originally intended as a political commentary on the Hamas missile attack at an Israeli school bus and the retraction of the Goldstone Report, the column became a personal recollection of my daughter Alisa's murder in April 1995 and the lessons learned since.

Sadly, innocent civilians are again being put in the crosshairs by Hamas and its allies in Gaza. (Thank you, Susie.) And Israel's reaction will be deemed wrong.

From ADL - Arab newspapers waste no time; anti-Semitic cartoons all the rage.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has collected a series of anti-Semitic cartoons printed in response to the retraction of the Goldstone Report.

The cartoons ran on Al-Jezeera and in other media outlets in the Middle East including this one from Jordan, which you will recall has a peace treaty with Israel.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised at this latest outburst from some of Israel's neighbors, but I would like, just once, to be surprised at the absence of such hatred.

You can see the rest of the cartoons and read the ADL press release here: Arab Newspaper Editorial Cartoons React to Goldstone Retraction