As we go to press on Tuesday, we fervently hope that the expectations for a large turnout at the March for Israel in the nation’s capital have been more than met. This is a time of extraordinary levels of antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment and competition for the ear, and favor of government is greater than it has ever been. And those folks, by definition successful politicians, all know how to count.
It should also be clearer than ever that we must multiply the force of our numbers and speak to power in harmony and without the discord that has confused our message and diluted the force of even the meager numbers we have always had.
On Oct. 7, pure evil broke our collective Jewish hearts yet astonishingly much of the world, in particular the academic part, reacted with unimagined and unbridled hostility and hatred towards the Jewish people. It cannot be something that we will easily overcome. Nor will we recover any time soon that sense that we are safe in the land of the free and the home of the brave as well as still an integral part of it.
We must take it as the profoundest of messages that the savagery of Oct. 7 should so equivalently inflame passions against its victims.
Yet we are a strong and resilient people possessed of the ultimate secret weapon even if some of us don’t recognize it as much as others all the time. But, at all events, this is the time to move forward selflessly, together, both in aid to our brothers and sisters in Israel and here in America.
It used to be that a nod to Tel Aviv or biting into a blintze was de rigeur and a rite of passage for political candidates. There is more to it now more than ever.
