Hebrew Voices #170 – Rabbi Helps Survivors of Hamas Genocide

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #170 - Rabbi Helps Survivors of Hamas, Nehemia spoke with civil rights activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, about the struggles of thousands of Israeli families living under daily rocket bombardments. Rabbi Glick gives updates about the war in Israel and shares about the numerous lives changed by the generous donations of many of our viewers and listeners to the survivors of the Hamas genocide. [Viewer Discretion Advised]

I look forward to reading your comments!

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Hebrew Voices #170 – Rabbi Helps Survivors of Hamas Genocide

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Rabbi Yehudah Glick, an Orthodox rabbi who is the head of the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation. He also has the Amitsim Foundation. The flag behind him says, “Zion, a House of Prayer for all nations.” He is a former member of the Israeli Knesset, and he famously survived an assassination attempt by terrorists who actually shot him. And more recently, there was an assassination plot by Iran against you. Rabbi Yehudah Glick, I’m so happy that you’re here with us, and that you’re safe and you’re healthy.

You’re over in Israel, I’m over in Texas, so we need you to tell us what’s going on in Israel. We have been asking people to donate to help the survivors of the Hamas genocide, and you’re the one on the ground who is helping those people with the money that we have raised. So far, we’ve sent $60,000, and we’ve raised some more, and as soon as that comes through to us we’ll be able to send it to you. So, tell us what’s going on on the ground in Israel.

Yehudah: Nehemia, right this moment there is a siren in the center of the country, in Rishon Lezion and Nes Ziona, in the center of the country. But that's a kind of a normal situation, unfortunately, that we’re getting used to these days.

Look, there’s room for perspective to look at what's going on. I can say that if we look purely rationally, the feeling in the street in Israel today, I think we’re a country in post trauma, or maybe still in the trauma. I don’t think anybody has recovered from the horrible, heartbreaking massacre, pogrom, any word you call it, what happened two and a half weeks ago on the southern border of the State of Israel. There’s nobody in this country… we’re a small country. There’s nobody in this country who does not know some 10 people at least that were killed, or kidnapped, hijacked, or kept hostage now in Gaza.

There’s a lot of wounded people, and other people, many, many thousands more, on our northern border and our southern border, who are daily either in shelters or evacuated from their homes to temporarily living in hotels. The entire north - Kiryat Shmona, Nahariya, and the south – Sderot, Netivot, Ofakim, and all the kibbutzim and all the settlements in the south, the people have all been evacuated to some 60,000 hotel rooms all over the country.

Nehemia: I read there are something like 500,000 Israelis who are displaced from their homes, like the entire city of Kiryat Shmona. It’s unprecedented.

Yehudah: Yeah, the whole of Kiryat Shmona and the whole of Sderot. I don’t know the exact numbers, but those numbers are definitely… But even people who were not evacuated, many people in places not far like in Ashdod, or in Be’er Sheva even, who don’t feel comfortable, or they don’t have a sheltered room in the house, they’ve moved to their grandparents, or they stay with other family in some other place in the country.

Nehemia: Let’s slow down. What’s a sheltered room? For our audience who doesn’t know what that means.

Yehudah: Okay. So, in the past, every building, or in the neighborhood, they would have a shelter, what’s called a miklat.

Nehemia: A bomb shelter.

Yehudah: It would be a place where all the neighbors would run to. Today, in the last 20 years, actually, since Saddam Hussein started sending missiles, every new house, every new house that is built, one room in the house is built with sort of cemented walls, I think, I believe, and walls that are sort of missile-proof. Or at least they’re protected, which means that they don’t fall apart if the missile falls on them.

So now, in different places in the country, you have a certain amount of time from the moment the missile is sent, and the Israeli detectors announce it. If you’re in Sderot you get 15 seconds. If you’re in Jerusalem I think you’ve got a minute. You have to run to the room until, usually they tell you 10 minutes, but until the Iron Dome manages to prevent that missile from reaching civilian populations.

Nehemia: Or if it does fall and hit civilian populations. I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago, and I ran with my wife to our bomb shelter. We didn’t have a room in the apartment because the building was built in 1950, before that practice, and we’re sitting in the bomb shelter, and we hear 10 explosions. Later we found out one of the missiles fell on Abu Ghosh and killed a little Arab boy.

Yehudah: We’re sad about anybody who gets killed.

Nehemia: Amen.

Yehudah: And I think that the fact that people take their right to take life… If there’s one command that repeats itself in every one of the Five Books of the Torah, the Pentateuch, every single one, and that is the law against taking somebody else’s life. It appears already in Genesis, it appears in the Ten Commandments in Exodus, it appears again in Leviticus, it appears again in the Book of Numbers, and it appears again in Deuteronomy. Every one of the five books of the Pentateuch, it’s repeated again and again - it’s the only law that’s repeated five times, that ha’Shem created us in His image and therefore nobody has the right to take somebody else’s life.

And one of the reasons why ha’Shem says He wants to get rid of the nations that were living at those times in Canaan was because these people sanctified killing their own children in honor of some kind of gods, what’s called the molech, or burning children in front of their god. Life is a basic concept; the command to choose life, to add life, to create life. And when there are people who sanctify terror, murder, killing, and other violence, you know for sure that these people are against our God.

Nehemia: Wow. Okay, so you’re over there in Israel, and I know you’re dealing with some of the survivors… Let’s back up. Maybe some people who are listening don’t know what happened two and a half weeks ago. I was speaking to a friend last night who is a person who obsesses over international news. He’s a Christian who believes the world is about to end, and he needs to read in the newspaper to find out exactly how to connect all the dots.

Yehudah: How it’s happening.

Nehemia: And so, he said he reads everything that comes out about Israel, and I said, “Do you really know what happened?” And I shared with him… honestly, I shared with him stuff I heard on Chadashot 13, Channel 13 News. I don’t have any intelligence sources… and stuff I read on Ynet; these are just things that are being reported. And he said, “I haven’t seen that in any American sources. All we heard was…” And I’m sure maybe other people have heard other things, but what this person heard is that there was a nature party and 260 people were killed by Hamas. That’s all they know. And I’m like, “That’s what you heard?” That would be like saying, “The Holocaust happened, and a few people died in Warsaw.”

Yehudah: It’s important people know, because we’re talking about something that I don’t know of any precedent, definitely nothing that I know of in my lifetime. We’re talking about on Shabbat, the 7th of October, which happens to be the eighth day of the holiday of Sukkot, which is celebrated as the Simchat Torah, the day that we dance and sing in synagogues all over the country. But even for people who are secular, it’s a national happy, singing, dancing holiday.

At 06:30 in the morning, Hamas first of all sent out thousands of missiles so that the Israeli army and the Israeli security forces would concentrate on the missiles. And then at the same time, 2,000 Palestinian Hamas terrorists ran into over 20 settlements, going from house to house, door to door, pulling people out of those sheltered houses, murdering them with bullets to the head. Not only that, there are stories that they burned people alive. They…

Nehemia: I’m going to do a trigger warning. So, if you’re going to go into details, this is sensitive stuff and I want you to share this.

Yehudah: I’m not going to show pictures.

Nehemia: No, no, we’re not going to show pictures. But I’ll tell you… so, the warning has been given. I kept hearing in certain media channels that 80% of the people who were killed were tortured. I’m like, "Torture; what does that mean?" I looked into it; I haven’t slept in two days.

Yehudah: I heard about the story about the woman who was pregnant, and they cut her stomach, and they shot the baby in the womb. The story about the parents… ZAKA, those identifying the bodies, they come into a house, on the left side of the living room they find a husband and a wife with their hands tied behind their backs and the husband had his eyes removed with a spoon. On the other side of the room are the son and the daughter, a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old, also with their hands tied behind their backs, and the son… there was a son and a daughter; the son, every one of his fingers was cut off. Then afterwards, they were both shot with a bullet in the head. Nobody knows which one came before. But the terrorists take out one of the phones from the house and they film how they are sitting and eating on the dining room table, while on the one side they have the husband and the wife crying and the other they have the children crying, and they’re sitting and eating, and only then did they shoot them with bullets.

These are crazy stories. Yesterday, we came out with a… one of the Hamas terrorists sent his parents an audio telling them, “You don't know! I’m in a kibbutz! I just personally murdered 10 Jews! I personally murdered 10 Jews!” And his parents are applauding him, “Wow! Good for you! Good for you!” And he’s going crazy.

These people were stabbed, people were murdered. Now, beside the settlements, there was this party where 3,000 people participated, and over 260 at least were murdered point blank. Meaning they caught them, and they shot them.

And aside from all this, over 220 Israeli citizens, many of whom have dual citizenships, were dragged by these Hamas people into Gaza as hostages. Amongst them 30 children under the age of 16, including an eight-month-old baby. These are hostages, including 70-, 80-year-old men and women, and these people were taken hostage.

All this happened, as I said… these are just examples, but every single one of the people that were killed, they were dragged out of their rooms… and many, many pages have been found how they described how holy the work they’re doing is. They just want to kill Jews because they’re Jews. And that was what happened here. This is anti-Semitism in its most severe situation, murdering…

Nehemia: There was actually an incident that, I think, for me underscored it. There was this doctor who was an Arab who lives in the Negev, and he was driving to work, and he was shot in the chest by one of the terrorists. And the other terrorist shouts…

Yehudah: What happened was, he got out of his car…

Nehemia: Right, to help them.

Yehuda: Because he saw the guy laying on the ground, playing as if he was wounded. He came over to him to take care of him. He got up and he shot him in the stomach.

Nehemia: And he was wearing a bulletproof vest because he knew there were rockets flying, the Arab doctor, and then one of the other terrorists says, “Don’t kill him, he’s an Arab.” So that proves… and they killed Arabs, but it proves the intention was genocide; to actually systematically go killing Jews.

I studied a lot about the Nazis, and there was something called the Einsatzgruppen, which were the Nazi death squads that followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union. And they would famously go to Kiev, and they lined the people up and murdered them. And sometimes they did it in sadistic ways, like what we’re hearing here. I can’t see a difference between what Hamas did, objectively, between what Hamas did and the Einsatzgruppen, except for one thing; the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis, tried to cover it up. Hamas is bragging about it!

Yehudah: Not only are they bragging about it, they had this guy interviewed this week, one of the guys who were investigated. The guy said in his investigation, “Our commanders said, 'If you’re interested, after you shot the girl or before you shot her, you can rape her.'” And he said, “Yes, some of my friends did it, before and after!”

So, these are really monstrous acts of hate. I don’t know any rational explanation but demonizing Jews because they’re Jews, and giving yourself permission, legitimizing yourself to…

Nehemia: What was the word you used? Demonizing Jews?

Yehudah: Demon, yeah. They drew Jews as if they were demons, as if they were satans. One said, “The Jews are satans. We can do anything we want to them.”

Nehemia: It’s definitely dehumanizing people, for sure. So, there are survivors. There’s thousands of survivors, and you’re working with the survivors.

Yehudah: I’d say the country right now is divided into several things. First of all, there are 300,000 soldiers who are getting ready for victory, to destroy the Hamas, to destroy and wipe them out, because these people have no right morally to live in this world anymore. At the same time, there are thousands, tens of thousands of families, who have been evacuated from their homes.

And aside from that, there are tens of thousands of people… the evacuation was only for families that are living up to seven kilometers from the border. But there are those who are living 10 kilometers from the border, 15 kilometers from the border, so they’re not evacuated, but they’re in their house, and they can’t leave their house because every hour, almost, they have to run to their sheltered room. They’re afraid, so schools are closed. Once in a while the mother or father runs to do some shopping and runs back home. And these guys are 24 hours a day, around the clock, at home climbing the walls.

One woman told me, “I divide my time into three. A third of the time I protect my kids from Hamas, a third of the time I protect my kids from each other, and a third of the time I protect my kids from myself.” When you’re climbing the walls 24 hours a day and you’re bored stiff… These are people who weren’t evacuated from their house, they’re living in Ashkelon and Ashdod...

Nehemia: Under lockdown.

Yehudah: And these are cities that are not far from the border, and they’re getting missiles. But they’ve not been evacuated because the Israeli command, what we call the Home Front Command, has decided that these people are not considered directly part of the war.

Nehemia: Even though yesterday there was a Hamas attempted incursion… they were trying to land more terrorists in Ashkelon by sea and air.

Yehudah: In Zikim and the Ashkelon area, yes there are. But there’s also a limit of how many hotel rooms Israel has.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Yehudah: But many people are going to their grandparents… but the situation is really very, very tough, and there’s a lot more I can say about the people of Israel. There’s a lot of solidarity, a lot of people are volunteering. Many Jewish communities and Christian communities from around the world are also supporting, and there’s a lot of people volunteering to help our army forces. There’s a lot of people who are out there helping the civilians who have been evacuated, and everyone is trying to find a niche that someone else is not doing, and that's very important.

Nehemia: So, share with the people… a lot of people that are listening to this may have donated to the work that you’re doing. So, tell us about some of that work.

Yehudah: So, when this thing started, we started inquiring where we were needed, and we saw that the soldiers were really... that they're pouring - justly - but they’re pouring… a lot of volunteers are going to help soldiers and bring them things. And so, we felt that that was already taken care of. And then we said, “We're going to go to the civilians.”

So, what we actually did is, we started off with civilians who had been evacuated, but then we saw that there also there are already a lot of volunteers. So, what we decided is, we’re going to go to the cities where the families are still there and are actually under anxiety 24 hours a day. And we’ve gone already… personally, I went to over 100 families, but our volunteers have reached out to 1,000 families that are living in these cities. Nobody knows about them. They’re normal people - a father, a mother and two or three children, and they’re bored stiff. So what we did is we brought out thousands…

Nehemia: And just to be clear, they’re under daily rocket attacks.

Yehudah: They’re under rocket attacks all the time.

Nehemia: This isn’t just something that happened on October 7th, it’s happening now.

Yehudah: And these mothers and fathers are taking care of little kids, in horror, afraid where the next missile is going to fall down, and when they’re going to have to run again to the shelter room. And by the way, many of these kids sleep in the shelter room and they spend their whole day there. They have televisions in their sheltered room, and they’re bored stiff all day.

So, what we did, our volunteers, Hadas and myself included, we went out to families that we know have little kids and we brought every family around 10 boxes of board games. And we not only brought them boxes of board games, we sat there for an hour or two with every family, playing with the kids these board games and making sure the kids knew how to play, and getting them into an atmosphere of playing.

In many of these houses we have to convince the mother to turn off the TV, because the TV is pouring news, which is not healthy for anybody 24 hours a day. Once in a few hours if you want to listen to what happened, okay, but TV’s are running. So, instead of having the TV on, we’re sitting down with the family, with the parents and the children, playing a game! And it makes such a change. And then we leave them the games so they go on and play. We contact them on a daily basis. We have lists of names that we’re contacting every single day. Our volunteers ask, “What’s going on? What do you need?” Some people say, “Listen, I’m afraid to go out shopping.” So besides bringing the board games, they go and do shopping for them, and they bring it.

So, what we believe is, this war is going to take time. It’s not going to be over in two days. An army has to be strong, but in order for the army to be strong, we need the rear to be strong as well. And if the rear is going to start falling apart, then the army is going to fall apart. We don't call it “the rear”, we call it “the home front”. These are fathers, mothers, and little kids who are, every single day, challenged by the fact that they have to be in horror, anxiety, and depression.

In some of these places, like in Ashkelon, all the stores are closed, so people don’t have an income, people are not going to work. It’s really a crazy situation, and we don’t know how long it’s going to last. We need our civilians to be strong enough to be able to go through this time, and thanks to the contributions… as I said, Hadas and myself are volunteering. We don’t take a cent; every single cent that came in and every single cent that comes in immediately goes out to buy games for these families, to go shopping for these families.

At the same time, we did have a few specific requests from some soldier units, and we brought them stuff also. There was one unit of 50 soldiers going in, and they needed a special bag, so we bought 50 bags. There was one unit which was far away that didn’t have water, so we transferred 120 bottles of water. But mostly, we’re concentrating on the civilian population, fathers, mothers, and little kids to give them the strength to go through these days and to be strong, because… On the one hand there’s a strong consensus in Israel that we have to go in and take care of the Hamas, and we can’t allow this to continue, and at the same time, we know we’re eating a lot of fingernails and sitting, and we need nerves made of iron.

Nehemia: I want to just draw an analogy here. Some of our audience… and I’ve spoken to a lot of people since I’ve gotten back, and they’ve said, “We can’t imagine what that was like.” And for me, the best analogy is, I remember 9/11, and I remember the American… And look, America lost 3,000 people in 9/11, it was a horrific thing. Israel lost half that number, but the American population at the time was 300 million, and the Israeli population is 10 million. So, if you look at it proportionally… I’m bad at math.

Yehudah: Nehemia, that’s definitely true, but again, 9/11 was one act.

Nehemia: Right, that’s what I’m getting at. 9/11 was over in one day, and this has been going on now for two and a half weeks and will probably continue for another three months, if not more.

Yehudah: Yeah. Look, they’re still identifying bodies. I don’t know if you understand. Many of the bodies were found burned to pieces or in pieces, and the difficulty of identifying the bodies is still going on. Many of the bodies have not been identified yet.

Also, besides the 220 that are hostages, over 100 that are still missing, nobody knows… The 200 we know for sure have been taken to Gaza, 100 we don’t know where they are. They could be laying out somewhere. People started running away… and by the way, the Hamas was shooting on the roads at anybody who was running; wherever you were going, they were shooting all over. They just had one purpose; they wanted to kill as many as they could.

Nehemia: I saw one report from the forensics, and again trigger warning guys if you don’t want to hear this, which I completely understand, then fast-forward about a minute. So, they had this gush, “a clump” of carbonized material, and they were like, “Okay, it looks like it’s a body, but we’re not sure.” So, they put it through a CT scan, and they saw there were two skeletons; a father holding his son wrapped in wire, burned alive. So, they wrapped them in wire, the father and son, and set them on fire and killed them. And so, you don’t know at first if it’s one person, if it’s two people, you just see a block of carbonized material. And those are the ones they were able to identify. There are others that they’re saying they may never be able to identify.

Yehudah: Yeah. These stories are really horrific… For me until now, these are only stories I read about in history books. I read about them in Kishinev, in the massacres there, in the random times… the Inquisition, and of course, the time of the Holocaust. But I think, maybe somebody wrote it here, that Israelis who were taking for granted the fact that we have a state and never got to see the Jewish people in exile, now got a picture of what the exile looked like and the importance of the State of Israel.

But I think here we have to emphasize the fact that right now we’re not talking about a national Israeli battle. It’s a battle of the free world against evil. Like ISIS, just like everybody understood that ISIS beheading people was something that’s way beyond anything that’s legitimate in any kind of war, Hamas has committed every single war crime, crimes against humanity, in the book. Every single one. And the slaughtering of people one after another, that’s something that’s horrific.

And the Hamas is supported by Hezbollah, by Iran, and by Qatar. And we have to make it clear that the free world… not only the free world, the world of people who believe in God, have to understand that God told us to wipe out Amalek. God Himself wiped out Sodom. When there are sins that are intolerable in terms of cruelty, and their only reasoning is cruelty…

And they didn't get anything. The Hamas did not gain anything from this! They knew that Israel was going to fight back. So, what did they gain? They didn’t gain anything! Just the very fact that they did it out of hate, it's really something that my mind cannot understand. These are things as a human being I definitely cannot understand, and we cannot forgive.

Nehemia: So, I want to talk more about some of your work with the survivors. Share some stories, because some people don’t understand. So, share if you can.

Yehudah: For sure. I’m loaded with stories and pictures.

Nehemia: We’re not going to show pictures but share some stories.

Yehudah: The hugs and the kisses that we’re getting from these families… since everybody is right now concentrating on the families of the civilians that were killed and the families that were evacuated, but simple families who are just living in a city subjected to missile attacks every single day, a few times a day, people say, “Okay. This is normal life.” But this is not normal life. We walk into a house and see a grandmother and a grandfather, some of them don’t even speak the language, together with the father, the mother, and three kids, and they’re all living together because they don’t have a shelter in their house. So, they’re living together in a three-room apartment, 8, 10, 12 people coming in and spending all day there, morning to night.

Nehemia: Wow.

Yehudah: Now, we did a lot of arts and crafts with these kids, and every one of these kids… not one of them did not write something to do with todah. You saw how… like they say, “Cold water to a thirsty throat.” Every single family whose door we knocked on, the family was so grateful, they said, “Wow, thank you so much for thinking of us.” Because these are families that nobody thinks about because everybody is right now concentrating on so many other things and so many other missions.

We really took a niche that nobody else is taking, and again, none of the contributions goes to any of our logistics or to any of our organization. It goes directly to families, 100% to the families, and it’s doing a lot of good. After we gave the families their presents, we keep getting phone calls saying, “We’re playing every single day with the game you gave us! It changed our whole atmosphere in the room in the house. We were fighting all day, now we’ve had a whole week that nobody fought with anybody.”

It’s a change in the atmosphere and it gives them strength because people were really in despair. I can tell you; I spoke in one of the houses to a mother who works in El Al, in the airport, and she told me, “Listen, you’ll be surprised, but the airport is packed with people that are leaving. People are getting up, moving out, and flying somewhere safe.” This is something that, when we have a country with 300,000 soldiers who are in reserves that are out there, we can’t allow this to happen.

So, I say personally to families that say, “Listen, we can’t bear it,” I say, “You’re right, go, go." But I say that as a nation we need people to be strong, and everyone understands it. They understand that’s what we need, but it’s not easy. It’s not easy to sit around at home with six or seven kids.

I’ll tell you another thing. We had three families, three different families, and a child was supposed to celebrate his bar mitzvah, and they bought all the stuff for the bar mitzvah. A bar mitzvah is… in Jewish tradition a 13-year-old-boy celebrates becoming an adult, and they have a big, big celebration. Three children, their celebration was canceled.

We had one child in Netivot, one child in Ashdod, and one child in Yavne, three kids. The one from Netivot, they went to Eilat, and they celebrated just it the mother and their friends instead of a big celebration with everybody. And now, these are kids who have been waiting months and months for this big celebration they were going to have, and now it was canceled. And you can imagine the 13-year-old kid, the disappointment in his eyes… not only do they tell it. You have to sit with these children for 20 minutes, 30 minutes… our volunteers are told that we don’t leave the house in less than an hour, because the first 20 minutes you say, “How are things?” “Everythings okay, everythings okay.” Slowly, things come out, and the children start crying and telling us how difficult it is for them. And it’s difficult, believe me, it’s so difficult. And no psychologist has any time for these kids now. Not for the kids and not for the parents.

Nehemia: I just want the audience to understand; a bar mitzvah is such a big thing in Jewish culture. Think of planning a wedding, but it’s just for the kid who’s now becoming an adult, that’s what a bar mitzvah essentially is. And to have that canceled because there’s a war going on… there are rockets falling, and they’ve closed the celebration areas, a wedding hall or something. Just imagine your wedding was canceled because there’s rockets firing, and instead, you have to celebrate it with two or three people. By the way, my wedding had seven people because it was during COVID, but I wasn’t upset about that.

Yehudah: … there’s a difference between what an adult can tolerate and what a child can tolerate.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Yehudah: And these children, usually they’ve prepared a year in advance and they’re waiting for it. And we went to the houses. We saw all the bags of candies waiting, and all these souvenirs that they were supposed to give out, and the clothing, the suit that the kid had bought. He was waiting for that special day in his life, and they canceled it. It’s very difficult.

Nehemia: That sounds very difficult. So, I want to ask you a provocative question, which maybe we’ll edit out.

Yehudah: Please.

Nehemia: So, you’re talking about how all these kids are suffering, and one of the ways they’re presenting this in the Western media is, “Well, at least in Israel you have bomb shelters. In Gaza the innocent civilians…” I’m not talking about the terrorists, “they don’t have bomb shelters.” So, what would your response to that be?

Yehudah: I really don’t find myself… I don’t know if the United States took into consideration in Hiroshima, bomb shelters, and if we fought against the ISIS, did the children of the ISIS families have where to live? Right now, Gaza has announced war and the Hamas has announced war against Israel. One of the reasons Israel has not entered Gaza yet is because we are begging the families to move out of their houses to places in the south of the Gaza area. We’re not fighting there, and we’re giving them time. We’re talking about the people who came into a music festival and shot people dead.

Nehemia: And how much time were the families in Be'eri and Nir Oz given before the Hamas came to murder them? They were given none.

Yehudah: They were sitting and hiding in closets for 18 hours, 20 hours, these families. Nobody gave them any time. Not only did they not give them any time, they shot them brutally. So, the question right now is… it’s a war against cruelty, a war against evil. Do I say that there aren’t going to be innocent people affected? There are. But these people are under the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas right now rules over Gaza.

I want to remind people; 20 years ago, Israel evacuated from the Gaza Strip every single Jewish settlement, and every single Jewish settler, and every single Jewish soldier. It was handed over to the Palestinians in Gaza. Not only was it handed over, 25% of Israel’s agricultural exports came from these Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The Jews moved out, the grass helms were still there, everything was just there. Israel raised tens of billions of dollars for the population of Gaza. What did the Gazans do with that money? Instead of investing it in their civilians, they went ahead and built tunnels under Gaza, cities of tunnels just for the sake of terror. Billions of dollars that the international community donated to the Gazan civilians, where is it now? It’s being used for developing terror.

Nehemia: By the way, the Gazans could go into those tunnels and be perfectly safe, but Hamas won’t allow them to.

Yehudah: For sure, and the Hamas bombed their own hospital. Hamas, I don’t know if people know, hundreds of people were killed…

Nehemia: Yeah, the al-Ahli Hospital was hit by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, and then they blamed it on Israel. It’s a modern-day blood libel. By the way, when Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, they didn’t just take the Jews out of their home. I think it was 9,000 Jews who had lived in the Gaza Strip; they dug up the graves. Jews had been living there for three generations. They dug up graves of Jews and moved them out of Gaza.

Yehudah: We moved everything out so they won’t have any Jewish symbols there. They could have taken over the place and really turned it into a paradise. Instead, the leadership of the Gazans turned their place into a hell, and the civilians of Gaza can only blame their government. They were talking about turning Gaza into a Singapore of the Middle East. Unfortunately, their leadership did not want to do that because they have one goal. Their goal, and they say it out loud, their goal is to kill as many Jews as possible.

Nehemia: And by the way, Singapore is a really good analogy because Singapore is this tiny little political entity, which has a much higher population density than Gaza. And it is one of the richest countries in the world, with no natural resources. What’s that?

Yehudah: It’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world also.

Nehemia: I’ve been to Singapore, it’s an amazing place. It has different ethnic groups, and they all get along, and they’re very productive. And that’s because they decided, “That’s what we want to do.” They could have had eternal civil war in Singapore, but they decided, “No, we’re going to get along and we’re going to live in peace.”

Yehudah: By the way, in Singapore there are 10 official religions, and they all live in harmony, diversity, and respect. The people of Gaza could have done the same...

Nehemia: By the way, including Jews and Muslims, there’s a large Muslim population in Singapore, and they made the decision, “We’re going to get along in harmony and peace.” It’s possible.

Yehudah: So, as you said, it’s not a fight against Islam. It’s not a fight against the Palestinian nation. It’s a fight against evil, cruelty, against human beings who think they have a right to sanctify murder. It’s against people that their whole brain is disordered and maneuvered by hate, by glorifying hate, and these people… there's no other alternative, the world cannot tolerate it. Just like the world couldn’t tolerate Nazis, and just like the world cannot tolerate ISIS. These people are Taliban, these people, the world cannot tolerate.

Nehemia: So, okay, you’re a rabbi, and I want you to talk about… in Judaism we have this verse in Deuteronomy… because what they say, their official motto, their official policy, is that they love death more than the Jews love life. Talk for a minute about the Jewish love of life. We have a verse that says “va’chai ba’hem”, “and you will live by them”, and you talked about “be’tzelem Elohim”.

Yehudah: Not only “va’chai bahem", u’vacharta ba’chaim”, God says, “choose life.” When God created man, He said, “Be fruitful, make sure to eat and to develop the world.” The mission that the Bible talks about is always that ha’Shem gave the world over to mankind, and He wants us to make this a better place to live in.

And so, in the Book of Deuteronomy, as you mentioned, which is really Moses saying goodbye to the people in his last month and a half of his life, telling the people, “Listen, you’re going to a new land, you want to develop a land that will be fruitful.” In Judaism not only do we not idealize hate, we don’t idealize poverty either. We idealize living rich and enjoying the world. Everything should be blessed, your animals, your cattle, your fruits of the tree and the fruit of your womb. Everything. Just one thing… remember that you’re here for a purpose. Remember that you’re here to make this world a better world to live in. Remember that you’re here to choose life. Choosing life means choosing to walk in a way that develops the world and not in a way that destroys it.

Ha’Shem says specifically, again and again… when ha’Shem chooses Abraham, He says, “I choose you because you chose justice and righteousness.” And He talks about the fact that that's our mission. Our mission is to bring this message to the entire world. The people of Israel have to bring this message to the world, that we have to raise the banner of ha’Shem, God Almighty, as one king who wants us all to be different. He created this world with diversity, but He wants us to live and to co-operate and to turn our swords into plowshares because really, we’re here to make this world a better world, to develop this world, to upgrade the world. And that’s why I say it’s not a battle of Israel, it’s a battle of the world. It's a battle of God.

I say God of Zion, the time has come. The time has come for ha’Shem to stand up, to rise, to arrive, and have mercy on Zion, and to tell the world, “We’re here for shalom.” Jerusalem is called "the city of shalom". Shalom does not only mean peace, it means a comprehensive peace; a peace in which the drum does not want to be a violin and the piano does not want to be a cello, but they’re all there to serve the harmony, to serve the symphony. And the symphony is there so that the different instruments serve together, and that’s the different nations that can serve together. But when nations decide to get up against another nation, the concept is, if the reason is to achieve… achievements is one thing, but if the reason is just pure hate, then that’s evil, and we have an obligation to step on evil.

When you brush your shoes, you don’t brush the bottom of the shoe, because when something is supposed to be stepped on, it should be stepped on. And I think you can’t put shoe polish on the bottom of your shoe and make it shine. In the world, evil is evil, and we have to fight it, and we have to destroy it. And part of being moral is to make sure this world does not tolerate a people that promotes values that are values of death.

Nehemia: Amen. Okay, so people can go to my website, NehemiasWall.com, and we have a special link there, a special campaign for raising money to send over to the survivors in Israel. And you’re the boots on the ground who is doing that work. Over at NehemiasWall.com.

Yehudah: I want to take advantage of the fact that I’m talking to you, and to thank… really, from the bottom of my heart, I don’t take it for granted at all. I want to thank all of those who have already participated in the contributions up until now. I promise you every single cent was used for a good purpose. And I once again pray to ha’Shem to be worthy to be your emissary here in Israel, and to support those families that need us and that need us to be strong.

Nehemia: Amen. Rabbi, would you end with some kind of a bracha, or a prayer or something?

Yehudah: Yes. Usually we say, “Let's pray, may ha’Shem protect Israel, guard Israel.” But today, I don’t think that’s the idea. We don’t want guarding and we don’t want protection. Today we’re talking about victory, and it's not for Israel, it's for the world. We need to make sure this world does not tolerate evil. And there should be room and place for everyone in this world to contribute, to make this world a better world to live in.

And it’s a call from Zion, it’s a call from the mountain of ha’Shem, it’s a call from the Kingdom of ha’Shem, from His palace. He wants this world to serve as His kingdom. I want to bless each and every one of you that ha’Shem should open the treasures of heaven, pour His blessings on each and every one of you. Each and every one of you should be a flame in His menorah, to bring light to the world, to your friends, to your relatives, to your neighbors, to yourselves. Ha’Shem should help you overcome every one of the challenges. Challenges of healing, physical healing, mental healing, emotional healing, psychological healing, financial healing, educational healing, family healing.

Ha’Shem should give you strength to overcome every one of the challenges you’re in so that you should be able to serve as a flame for His light to bring about that this world should be a much holier world, a much better world, a fruitful world and a caring world, and a world of generosity, and not a world of hatred, God forbid. So, I bless each and every one of you and I thank you again for participating and for being with us.

Nehemia: Amen. Thank you.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
09:24 Trigger Warning: Disturbing information
12:41 Genocidal intent
27:34 Working with the survivors
33:33 What about the Gazan civilians?
39:40 Choose life that you may live
44:03 Closing thoughts

MENTIONED VERSES
Leviticus 18:5
Deuteronomy 30:19
Genesis 1:28

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The post Hebrew Voices #170 – Rabbi Helps Survivors of Hamas Genocide appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.