Hillel Goldberg

“Genocide” is an intent to exterminate an entire group, and an effort to actualize the intent. Israel has no such intent. It went to war in Gaza as a matter of self-defense. By definition, self-defense cannot constitute an intent to exterminate an entire group. When Israel declared war on Hamas after Oct. 7, it was not for revenge, not for retaliation, not tit-for-tat. It was for self-preservation.

Last Friday was June 5. My guess is that June 5, as a date, made no more impact on most people than June 4 or June 6. I am sure that June 5 is someone’s birthday or anniversary, but at one time the entire Jewish people and, for least a year or two, the entire world knew and understood June 5.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been sued by the Trump administration, an action that has unleashed a slew of non-sequiturs. But first, a brief introduction. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit, was founded in 1971 by Morris Dees to counter anti-black racism. The center spent a significant segment of its early years calling out and bankrupting the Ku Klux Klan. This was an important, worthy and creative effort.

We live in a culture of no consequences. From the international to the local, action is contemplated, the consequences are not. But there are always consequences, and when they inevitably come, they come as a shock because, in a culture of no consequences, they are entirely unanticipated. The nations of Western Europe prioritize social welfare and the environment at the expense of defense. And why not? There are no consequences.

Raacheli Fried, a Los Angeles native and resident of East Denver, organized a “Tehillim group,” a Psalms group, 11 years ago. People in the group recite Psalms for many reasons, among them a “complete healing,” a refuah shelemah, for sick people. A Tehillim group may also be organized to pray for a single person, as Essie Fleischmann has done.