There are moments in Jewish history when cowardice masquerades as conscience, when weakness parades as piety, and when those who should be the guardians of their people instead become its saboteurs. We are living through such a moment now, when voices from the camp self-titled “Open Orthodoxy,” have chosen to publicly criticize the State of Israel during the most fateful struggle for Jewish survival since 1948.
That any group calling themselves rabbis, even if they are not considered mainstream Orthodox — men supposed to be ordained to be defenders of Torah, of truth, and of Jewish destiny — would lend their names and pulpits to statements condemning Israel in this hour of trial is beyond scandalous. It is betrayal, it is ignorant, and it is contradicted by every fact on the ground.
The War Israel Did Not Choose
Let us begin with the obvious. Israel did not choose this war. Hamas did.
On October 7, 2023, thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed across the border into southern Israel, butchering 1,200 Jews in the most sadistic massacre since the Holocaust. Women were raped, children were burned alive, families were slaughtered in their homes, concertgoers were gunned down in open fields. Babies were taken hostage. Holocaust survivors were dragged into Gaza. The images shocked even a jaded world, and for a brief moment, even Israel’s harshest critics understood that this war was not optional.
Israel entered Gaza not out of vengeance but out of necessity. Hamas itself declared that it would repeat October 7 “again and again and again” until Israel was destroyed. What nation could allow such an enemy to remain on its border? To fail to respond would be national suicide.
And yet, in this context, with Jewish blood still fresh in the sand, with hostages still languishing in Hamas tunnels, some "Open Orthodox" rabbis chose not to rally to Israel’s defense but to criticize her.
The Facts They Ignore
These "Open Orthodox" rabbis speak of Palestinian Arab suffering as if it were inflicted by Israel in a vacuum, as if Hamas did not exist, as if the war were some sadistic project of Zionism rather than the direct consequence of Hamas’s savagery and butchery.
But let us be clear. Israel is not in Gaza to torment civilians. Israel is not in Gaza to occupy land. Israel is not in Gaza to expand borders. Israel is in Gaza for one purpose and one purpose only: to eradicate Hamas, a genocidal death cult that has sworn to annihilate the Jewish peoples, wherever they may be, including at Yeshiva University, God forbid.
Every child suffering in Gaza, every hospital without power, every shortage of medicine, every crumbling building — all of it, every bit of it — lies at the feet of Hamas.
Hamas built more than 300 miles of terror tunnels - larger than the entire New York City subway system - instead of schools,
Hamas hoarded fuel for rockets instead of hospitals.
Hamas turned Shifa Hospital and UNRWA schools into military bases.
Hamas leaders stole the international aid meant to feed the Gaza Palestinians over the part 29 years, that was triple per capita of the Marshall plan of post-war World War II, and each became multi-billionaires
Hamas stole international aid, while its leaders, luxuriated in five-star hotels in Doha, sent desperate poor and misguided Palestinian Arabs to blow themselves up.
Israel, by contrast, has delivered more than two million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza since the war began — a figure comparable to the entire Berlin Airlift under Harry Truman, which saved West Berlin from Soviet strangulation. Israel has created humanitarian corridors, paused offensives, and repeatedly warned civilians to evacuate areas of combat.
No army in history has shown such concern for enemy civilians. No army in history, besides the IDF, has been dumb enough to warn its enemies that it is about to attack or bomb a particular area, thereby denying themselves the element of surprise, which is the key to winning military victories.
The United States, in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, never airdropped humanitarian aid into Fallujah or Kandahar while actively fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda and it never dropped leafless telling the civilians and their terrorist combatants that they were about to attack the area. Britain did not do it in Northern Ireland. Russia certainly has not done it in Ukraine. Only Israel has done so— and still it is accused of cruelty - and this time by so-called “Open Orthodox" rabbis.
Rabbinic Cowardice Disguised as Morality
What kind of Jewish religious leader, with all this before him, uses his pulpit to undermine the only Jewish army in the world as it defends the Jewish people from annihilation?
What kind of spiritual leader, entrusted with inspiring Jews to stand proud and strong, instead tries to sow doubt, weakness, and shame?
These "Open Orthodox" rabbis imagine themselves prophets of morality. In truth, they are prophets of cowardice. They have confused compassion with capitulation, conscience with collapse. And they make the fatal mistake of believing that it is better for Jews to be dead and glorified in Hollywood films like “Schindler’s List” then to be alive and fight back to keep their children and grandchildren alive.
Their sermons are not courageous; they are capitulating. Their statements are not moral; they are derelictions of duty. And their need to be loved by a woke world while they witness 900 IDF soldiers buried in military cemeteries - which could have been avoided had Israel just indiscriminately bombed all of Gaza as Churchill did in Dresden, as FDR did in Berlin, and as Truman did with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - speaks to Jewish insecurity at the highest level.
At an hour when Jewish blood cries out from the earth — from Kfar Aza, from Be’eri, from the kibbutzim and the Nova music festival field — these "Open Orthodox" rabbis could not summon the clarity to say, Am Yisrael Chai. Israel must win. Hamas must be destroyed. Instead, they weep for Gaza as if the Israeli government wakes up in the morning with a desire to inflict pain.
This is not religious leadership. It is abdication. It is moral cowardice. It is an absence of Jewish pride and a need to receive validation from the antisemites of the UN and the Jew-haters of Europe.
The False Piety of Gaza Compassion
Let us speak plainly: there is no salvation in Gaza. There is no peace with Hamas. There is no future in negotiating with murderers.
Those who weep for Gaza without naming Hamas as the sole author of its misery are not acting as prophets. They are acting as Hamas’s propagandists. They are becoming the useful idiots of terror.
If these "Open Orthodox" rabbis truly cared for Palestinian Arab lives, they would denounce Hamas with every breath. They would call on Hamas to lay down its arms, release the hostages, and stop sacrificing Gazan civilians on the altar of jihad. They would preach that the greatest act of mercy toward Gaza would be the annihilation of Hamas.
But they do not. Because their sermons are not about truth. They are about comfort — the comfort of being applauded by The New York Times, the comfort of being embraced by progressive peers, the comfort of avoiding the hard, unpopular truths that real leadership requires.
Failing Their Communities
And here is the deepest shame. These "Open Orthodox" rabbis are not only failing Israel. They are failing their own communities.
At a time when Jews on college campuses are harassed and attacked, when mobs march through American cities chanting “Death to Israel” and “From the river to the sea,” when antisemitism in America is at levels unseen since the 1930s, their congregants need strength.
They need spiritual leaders who roar with pride. Rabbis who declare that Israel is our shield, our heart, our destiny. Rabbis who teach that Israel’s war is not only just but holy — a fight for the survival of the Jewish people against the forces of annihilation.
Instead, these letter signers mumble apologies, issue pious platitudes, and hide behind pseudo-prophetic language about peace and justice that means nothing in the face of machine guns and rocket fire.
They stand before their congregants wringing their hands about the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza” while ignoring the Jewish humanitarian crisis in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Sderot — where millions of Jews live under the shadow of rocket fire and the trauma of mass murder.
This is not leadership. It is surrender.
The Weight of History
The Jewish people are not strangers to betrayal from within. From the biblical spies who slandered the Promised Land to the assimilationist elites of 19th-century Europe who mocked Jewish nationalism, we have seen before what happens when Jews lack courage.
The Talmud tells us that the destruction of the Second Temple came about because of sinat chinam — baseless hatred — but it also came about because of weak leaders who failed to act. Who failed to protect their people. Who failed to show resolve in the face of enemies sworn to their destruction.
We see the same weakness now among these "Open Orthodox" rabbis. They are more afraid of criticism from the editorial board of the New York Times than of the judgment of Heaven. They are more worried about not being invited to interfaith conferences than about the fate of their brothers and sisters in Israel.
But history is merciless. It remembers the strong and forgets the weak. It honors the defenders and scorns the appeasers.
The Choice Before Them
These "Open Orthodox" rabbis - whose actions so resemble those of Neville Chaimberlain, criticize Israel today will one day be remembered as men who could not rise to the occasion, who chose cowardice over courage, who abandoned their people when the call to stand tall was unmistakable.
Israel will win this war. The IDF will eliminate Hamas. Jewish history will endure. The only question is whether "Open Orthodox" rabbis, in contrast to mainstream Orthodox rabbis, will have the honor of standing with their people in the hour of testing, or the disgrace of being remembered as those who failed.
The choice is theirs. But the judgment of history — and of Heaven — will be severe.