Shana Tova Dear Friends

From the President’s Desk
Shana Tova Blessing & Anti-Semite Opinion Piece

My dear honored friends, my colleagues overseas and here in Israel,

Very soon, the Rosh Hashanah candles will be lit, illuminating the holiday tables in Buenos Aires, Sydney, Bogotá, London, Jerusalem, and in almost every corner of the world. A network of holiday candles, small lights that together bind the people of Israel – to its past, to its future, and especially to one another.

Once again we’ll eat fish head as a charm to lead and not be led, we’ll taste apple in honey so that our days may be sweetened with good tidings, and we’ll eat pomegranate as a symbol of abundant good deeds. Once again we’ll pray together that the coming year will bring with it the warmth of family and not the heat of war, the light of home and not the lights of missile interceptors, and that on one of the days of 5786, the hostages and soldiers will return to their homes and loved ones.

The beginning of a new year is a good time to thank all those who stand on the Zionist front and contribute to advancing and strengthening the power of the Jewish state, of which we are all part! Each such person does so in their own way and to their own measure, so that on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5786, our state is strong, secure, and looks optimistically toward the future, as the center of the Jewish world for thousands of years to come.

A stormy year has passed over us and that’s not terrible. When it’s easy, it’s a sign we’re declining. I want to wish all of us that the coming year will be a year of strengthening and empowerment, military, economic, and social, a year of Israeli unity and national cohesion, of good life in the inheritance of our forefathers and in our communities worldwide. And to each and every one of you, I wish abundant health, prosperity, satisfaction, success and enjoyment in whatever you choose to do, and to our WIZO members, much fulfillment from your WIZO activities.

We are on the map, and we will continue to be on the map! The Zionist enterprise will continue to live and flourish, and the holiday candles will continue to burn: today, in the future, and forever.

השם עוז לעמו יתן, השם יברך את עמו בשלום

Shana Tova and happy holiday to all of you!

With blessings,
Anat Vidor

Hannah Einbinder and the Dress of Moral Superiority

The Jewish Emmy-winning actress tried to distinguish between Jews and Israel, and in her deranged way tainted the greatest moment of her life with an anti-Semitic message

By: Anat Vidor, WIZO President

How moving that in her moment of glory, the actress Hanna Einbinder suddenly remembered that she’s Jewish—a daughter of a people now fighting for its place in the world. And standing on the Emmy stage, with the coveted trophy in her hand, she cried into the microphone: “Am Yisrael Chai!” No, no, maybe try “Free the hostages immediately!” No, that’s not it either. Of all the beautiful messages of our culture, the comedian chose to express her Jewishness with the cry: “Free Palestine.” Later she explained with great wisdom: “As a Jew, it was important to me to separate between Jews and the State of Israel.”

And to that we say “Oy vey iz mir.”

It’s hard to argue with a young comedian living in the Hollywood bubble, while Bernie Sanders, for example, accuses Israel of “genocide.” This is a genre of people who sit safely, an ocean and half away from danger, and from there preach morality to us and advise us how to survive in the Middle East. They imagine that Israel slaughters Palestinians in the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, like the US did in Japan, for example. But they’re wrong, of course: Israel does everything to prevent the killing of innocents on both sides, and the fact that tens of thousands were killed in Gaza only testifies to the number of armed terrorists who point their weapons at us, and who fired tens of thousands of missiles at our cities, at night trying to distinguish between “Jews” and “Israel.”

The New York Times called the young actress a “useful infidel,” when Hamas itself translated her call to “free Palestine” into propaganda capital. How many times must one explain to her? The meaning of this call is not cutting a peace deal based on coexistence, but establishing another Arab state on the ruins of the only country in the Eastern Hemisphere where Jews live, while killing, expelling, or enslaving its citizens. That’s what Hanna actually said, and like a true infidel, she didn’t even understand her own words.

In her “after party,” Hanna makes a separation between Jews and Israel, hoping this will position her as a “good Jew” in the terms of Hamas and the anti-Semitic world. But if she’s a “good Jew,” then it follows that Israel and its supporters are the “bad Jews,” who willingly choose the path of genocide and endless wars, over the path of peace offered to them. In this, Hanna doesn’t increase the world’s enlightenment, but only plays into the hands of the anti-Israel propaganda machine, which would like us all to forget that the war in Gaza could have been ended in a moment, if only the Gazans themselves had released the hostages.

Here with us, in Israel, and in the Zionist world, we don’t separate between Jews and Israel. Israel is the state of the Jews and their defender, and the Jewish world is part of the Israeli soul and the reality in the land. Iron bonds connect us, the Judaism of Israel and the world is one, and only extreme detachment from reality can create a separation between the two. The enemies of the State of Israel, with whom we are currently fighting, are the declared enemies of every Jew in the world, and they would also kill Hanna herself with joy, if not because of her sexual identity then certainly because of her Jewishness.

So when we light the holiday candles, and they illuminate from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, let us raise together a glass “L’Chaim” for a good year: for Israeli unity, for victory over our enemies, for the return of our hostages and soldiers, and for the spiritual and military strengthening of Israel – the state of the Jews. And perhaps this year we’ll also pray for the quick sobering of the lost among us, because on the front of life versus terror – everyone matters and every Jew has meaning. “Don’t take lightly the blessing of a common person,” we say. I think this includes infidels too. Shana Tova and a blessed year to all of us!

A Story for Dessert

More from the world of acting and entertainment: Netflix announced a new historical series. The one who will portray the character of Swedish King Gustav III is the Swedish-Lebanese actor with the amusing name “Alexander Jihad Abdullah.” Indeed, a historical series, but hard to miss: with a wink to the future.