While our sons are risking their lives on the frontlines, jumping on grenades, shielding civilians in bomb shelters with their own bodies, and paying the ultimate price so this country can continue to exist, there are those sitting in air-conditioned rooms in the United States, sipping lattes, and spitting in their faces. And then they demand a prize for it at the Western Wall.
What hides beneath the whitewashed words of "pluralism" and "inclusion"?
In May 2021, when Israel was burning during Operation Guardian of the Walls, when millions of Israelis, children and the elderly, sat day and night in shelters under barrages of Hamas rockets - over 90 rabbinical students of the Reform movement published a public letter. The future generation of their leadership. What did they write there? Did they condemn the terror? Did they send strength to their brethren under attack? Absolutely not. They accused the State of Israel of "apartheid," called to halt military aid to the IDF, and cried crocodile tears over the suffering in Gaza.
This is not a one-time slip. This is a movement from which vast sections are today providing a tailwind, funding, and legitimacy to radical left-wing organizations on US campuses. Organizations that promote BDS, that call for boycotting Israeli products, and that persecute Jewish students who dare to support Zionism. As far as they are concerned, Judaism is universal, global, one that embraces everyone - except for the Israeli Jew fighting for his life.
This disdain for everything related to our nationalism comes from the highest levels. Listen to what happens at their "rabbinical" ordination ceremony (Hebrew Union College). The keynote speaker who takes the stage, to the sound of applause, doesn't speak about the eternity of Israel. On the contrary. He stands there and trashes the IDF. He describes our presence here as "walls made from the bodies of teenage soldiers." Do you understand? Those 19-year-old heroes standing on the firing line to prevent the next massacre are to him just pawns of an occupation protecting a "ghetto of zealots."
And more than that - he explains to their prospective clergy that there is no problem whatsoever, and it is even desirable, for the Jewish people to disappear and assimilate. He calls on them to tear down the "walls" of Judaism, preaches that intermarriage is the right path, and declares that if Judaism disappears from the world in favor of some enlightened "global tribe" - that is completely fine. For two thousand years, Jews sacrificed their lives so as not to assimilate, to preserve our heritage and our unique identity, and today, on their main stage, they celebrate the erasure of the Jewish people.
And here is the numerical absurdity that simply cries out to high heaven:
Out of about 12,000 synagogues in Israel, the Reform movement holds barely 50 congregations. That is less than half a percent. A marginal group that barely exists on the ground in Israel. It is exactly like one person, within a congregation of 300 worshippers, standing up in his audacity and demanding to expropriate a quarter of the synagogue for himself and his friends from abroad. Not just expropriate - but to bring loudspeakers there, change the prayer arrangements, and conduct ceremonies that trample on the tradition of the 299 other worshippers. In any normal place in the world, they would show him the door.
But then comes the Supreme Court.
Last night, in a decision that proves once again how disconnected the Supreme Court justices are from Jewish identity - excuse me, they are not disconnected. They are actively working against it.
Against tradition, against Judaism, and against the majority of the Israeli public, they decided to hand this movement a victory. In the name of those empty words of "equality," the Supreme Court is forcing the State of Israel to grant an official allocation and space at the Western Wall - the beating heart of the Jewish people - to those same people who despise us from afar.
They don't come to the Kotel (Western Wall) to pray. The Kotel doesn't really interest someone who dreams of becoming a citizen of the world and views our nationalism as a crime. They come to the Kotel as a battering ram. They want a foothold in our holiest place in order to gain political recognition, to poke a finger in the eye of traditional Judaism, and to undermine the Jewish identity of the state from within.
It is time that we, the sane majority in Israel, stop apologizing and stop bowing our heads to these manipulators.
The Western Wall is not real estate to be divided, nor is it playdough that can be molded according to the political whims of the Supreme Court. It belongs to a nation that is proud of its Judaism, that preserves its heritage, and that loves its soldiers. Whoever dreams of a world without a Jewish people - should not look for an estate at our Kotel.