May 12, 2021
A fog of war clouds the Israeli airspace as this episode goes to press. The country’s ability to secure its citizens is once again being put to the test by the more than 1,000 rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza over the past 40 hours. This reawakened quagmire sits awkwardly with the pacifying facade deployed a year ago by the Abraham accords normalizing ties with a select few Arab nations. A few weeks ago, France’s high court ruling in the Sarah Halimi case had the effect of reconnecting Israel’s “right to exist” with its commitment to secure Jews worldwide. In 2017, this 65-year-old Jewish Orthodox woman was cold-bloodedly thrown out of her balcony by a Jew-baiting, Quran-chanting Frenchman of Malian origin. The French judiciary’s failure to impart justice for the murder reminds the European conscience of Zionism’s noble aims, thereby helping rehabilitate Israel’s mission in the moral order. As the Halimi family continues a desperate search for justice and Israeli civilians undergo the heaviest rocket fire in a decade, we sit down with Simone Rodan-Benzaquen—the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Europe Director—and Einat Wilf—former member of the Knesset and co-author of The War of Return (2020), a widely noted polemic on the Palestinian refugee question. The episode would have been timely if only for the ongoing spike of anti-Semitic hate in Europe and Israel’s role in combating it. The escalating conflict in the Gaza strip and around the recent evictions in Sheikh Jarra (Jerusalem) have added an unfortunate newsy touch. Enjoy!
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