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If Jews in New York no longer recognize this city as safe for expressing their identity, the most recent example was on Monday night when Queens-born fashion designer Donna Karan held a fundraiser for the IDF in the West Village. Anti-Israel demonstrations surrounded the building to prevent participants from entering. That evening, they also occupied the Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal in an effort to raise attention to their cause by inconveniencing New Yorkers.

 Chanukah is the story of a Jewish army regaining control of the nation’s holiest site and reasserting sovereignty and autonomy in a Jewish land.  Chanukah is, in short, the most ardently Zionist holiday in the Jewish calendar.  So it is tragically hilarious that so many are using this holiday to call for the end of the Jewish state.

History shows that certain events precede periods of darkness. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated World War I and the death of 20 million. The rise of the National Socialists in Germany initiated the trajectory to World War II and the death of nearly 38 million. The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 led to devastation, destruction, and death throughout Iraq and the rise of ISIS. October 7, 2023, the Hamas massacre in Israel, raised the specter of a regional and even a global war with unthinkable consequences.

Since the unprovoked savage attack by Hamas terrorists on October 7, and the declaration of war on Hamas by Benjamin Netanyahu that evening, the free world and, in particular, the Western media, has been fixated on proportionality. Given this fact, one might question the legal and moral definitions of proportionality.

Author’s note: The following are the prepared remarks for the speech I gave at the West Hempstead Solidarity Rally on Sunday, December 17.

The veil of academia was punctured last week when Congresswoman Elise Stefalnik (R-NY-21) shredded the presidents of three major universities with a simple question: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute harassment on your campuses?” Astonishingly, none of the university presidents were able to simply say “yes.”  This caused a tidal wave of backlash, and that should only be the beginning.