From the Desk of Rabbi Jacobs

Just say ‘no’ worked much better in fighting drug use than in making peace among nations. Honest negotiations start before the shape or size of the tabla are decided, claims and counter claims are revealed, or conditions are set. The Seven Years War, the Hundred Years War, the American Revolution or defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo each found resolution in a more or less successful agreement among various parties with standing in the matter. 

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, with autonomy for the complex makeup of its intertwined diversity, remains a work in progress. The ethno-nationalism that seems more settled in Europe today is still subject to internal dissent, which has found political resolution in the few decades since the collapse of Communism. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia each have become multiple states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia by referendum, Yugoslavia through battle and ethnic cleansing. In America, the 1860s effort to divide a younger, smaller nation in the 1860s, left a bloody scar that took decades to heal—if it has.

In the first two decades of the present century, Iraq, Kuwait, Yemen, and Afghanistan have been theaters of military operation. Kurds, Armenians, Turks, and Azerbaijanis still quarrel about enclaves, autonomy, self-determination, and borders. Lebanon limps along shadowed by a dysfunctional government and externally underwritten groups by at least two competing states. Saudi oil fights Iranian wells, Shiite or Sunni, Islamist or modernist, intermingled with religious minorities nearly absent from mainstream historical accounts.

And, there is the small but vital section of land between the great rift extension of Jordan River Valley-Dead Sea-Aravah and the Mediterranean, called Palestine by Ancient Rome, and earlier Eretz Yisrael by Bible and modern Jews. Today, it is being torn by war to my great personal distress.

Under the Ottoman Empire—Europe’s ‘sick man’ before its dissolution during WW1—the southern part of Syria remained undeveloped. Legal status in personal matters was handled by each of the many religious communities according to religious laws. Many groups, including Christian communities, were internally divided according to areas of origin. Each had its own distinct identity, and often laid competing claims to small pieces of real estate. The complex known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by various groups including Ethiopian, Coptic, Armenian and Eastern Orthodox, in addition to Roman clerics. Protestants have other sites.

In Jerusalem, the oversight of the Temple Mount—or Noble Sanctuary (Al-Haram Al-Sharif)—was in the hands of the Grand Mufti and an inherited council, the Waqf, whose authority has not been dismantled since either the 1948-1967 division of Jerusalem (between Jordan and Israel) or since its re-unification following the Six Day War. Both the functional El-Aqua Mosque and the shrine like Dome of the Rock remain consecrated Muslim houses of worship. Jewish access has often been restricted to the entire plaza atop and east of the Western (Wailing Wall).

Following the dissolution of Ottoman Rule, with Turkey set on a modernizing path, the subsets of the former empire came under various plans. France saw Lebanon and Syria emerge, Britain supervised Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and its extended administration of the Mandate of Palestine until the young United Nations (founded in 1945) agreed on the Partition of Palestine, approved November 29, 1947. It came into force in May, 1948. Israel was born; neighboring states joined the inchoate Arab population—nascent Palestinians—in a concerted attack meant to push the Jews into the sea. They failed.

Prior to—and especially during the British Mandate—the collective, consistent answer of the Arab representations was: No. not now. Not ever. 

That remains the answer of Hamas. 

In a wanton orgy of murder, on October 7, Hamas alone attacked civilians and citizens inside Israel by over land, in light aircraft, from the Mediterranean. Could Israel reasonably respond in any way other than to push them back and seek to overthrow the rule of Hamas?

It is not a way to suppress drug use…