This week’s parshah begins with the story of Yaakov Avinu’s dream of the ladder ascending to heaven and the angels going up and down. At the end of the dream, G-d speaks to him. It is a promise to a man, but it foretells the history of a people. It is a lesson of profound importance in our own time.

On October 6, Israel and Gaza were in a ceasefire. How did that work out?

10,000,000 civilians were killed in World War I. Where were the protests? Where were the cries for humanitarian aid? Where were the cries, “Watch out for the civilians?” Where were the flyers to notify civilians of where to expect the strikes so they could move out of harm’s way? Where were the demands for a humanitarian ceasefire?

Much has been said about Gen Z since the start of the war against Hamas, as college campus protests and polling show that the youngest among us are also the most morally and intellectually bankrupt. That is the fault of those who came before them, who insisted on the lie that all cultures are the same, and that all conflict can be boiled down to a simple dynamic: oppressor and oppressed. This is how Gen Z discovered, and decided to deify, Osama bin Laden.

Since August 2021, when President Joe Biden executed the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, he’s been underwater in the polls.  According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he never got above 46% approval in all that time, and he usually hovers between 38 and 40%.  The latest war under his watch has not helped his approval numbers, and his polling against Trump and other Republicans is even worse.  For many reasons, this war in Israel could be the final nail in the coffin of the Biden re-election campaign.

The barbaric attacks by Hamas terrorists against the citizens of Israel on October 7 have sewn a new level of division across the United States. In their aftermath, Americans on both sides of the conflict have taken to the streets, and while many are peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, too often we are seeing bad actors come into play – bad actors who seek to take advantage of the current climate and turn peaceful protests into something much different