It has come to this. When the Shavuot festival starts on Thursday night, I will be both celebrating and worrying about what is happening in Jewish communities around the world – what’s happening in Israel and the global village in general.
Simchat Torah, a festival that should be particularly joyous, will forever be associated with the Iranian-funded, Hamas-led invasion and mega-atrocity on October 7, 2023, when 1,200 were murdered, 251 abducted, and thousands wounded. It was the start of a war on seven fronts, which – despite declared ceasefires – has turned into a war of attrition.
Yom Kippur – the holiest day in the Jewish calendar – will always have a double connotation with the war launched against Israel on that day in 1973, another failed attempt by the Arab world to annihilate the Jewish state. In recent years, it has been marred by a terror attack at a synagogue in Germany and last year’s fatal attack on a British synagogue in Manchester.
Shavuot is celebrated as a harvest festival concluding the seven-week “omer” countdown that started on Passover. But its greater significance is the celebration of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites on their Exodus from Egypt became the Jewish people more than 3,000 years ago.
This festival has also been scarred by attacks on Jews in the past, including a particularly heinous attack that took place 85 years ago, on Shavuot in June 1941. In the “Farhud” (“violent dispossession”), the Jewish community in Iraq was attacked by its Muslim neighbors, incited by the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Hussein, an anti-British admirer of Hitler.
At least 180 Jews were murdered in the two days of rioting concentrated in Baghdad, and hundreds of Jewish-owned homes and shops were destroyed. The attacks were brutal, including rape, mutilation, and murder; the victims included babies and the elderly.
Chillingly, Shlomo Mansour, who survived the farhud as a child and later moved to Israel, where he built his home on Kibbutz Kissufim, was among the oldest victims of October 7, 2023, when he was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the age of 85 and his body abducted to Gaza.
Shavuot's history of military victory
SHAVUOT ALSO holds a different association. Call it a striking memory. On June 7, 1981, as Jews celebrated the holiday, a remarkable feat of military history took place. Then-prime minister Menachem Begin, implementing the doctrine he would become known for, ordered a bold preemptive strike to knock out the nascent nuclear plant in Iraq before Saddam Hussein could create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
The raid, variously known as Operation Tammuz, Operation Opera, and Operation Osirak, was so audacious that pilots later admitted that while they believed the operation itself was viable, they hadn’t expected that all the crew would make it home safely.
It was so unexpected that, according to journalist folklore, when the report of the successful strike reached the Israel Radio newsroom on the sleepy Shavuot holiday, staff were so convinced someone was playing a prank that they got presenter Emmanuel Halperin to call his uncle, prime minister Begin, to confirm it before broadcasting the item.
Incredibly, in the last year, during Operations Rising Lion and Lion’s Roar, we have become used to hearing about Israel’s skills as the IAF has dominated the skies over Iran and has, with US help, significantly reduced the immediate threats of the nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic’s regime. The pilots on today’s missions, however, still realize they can’t be complacent, despite the stunning successes.
Such maneuvers are evidence of impressive intelligence-gathering, along with outstanding operational skills, which send their own message. Israel’s friends and enemies are all watching, learning, and assessing the long-term ramifications.
The Middle East has undergone such changes in recent years that it is now known that Israel supplied the United Arab Emirates with Iron Dome anti-missile systems to help protect the Abraham Accords ally from the ongoing attacks from Iran. Iranian drones this week struck a UAE nuclear power plant, signaling that the Islamic Republic regime, while weakened, is still in business – the terrorism business.
Israel blamed as the root of all evil as anti-Israel sentiment grows
This week, another flotilla set out for Gaza, a self-righteous armada of far-Left, pro-Palestinian supporters and their Islamist bedfellows, united only by their anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment. The situation in Gaza, brought about by the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas, is the rallying cry but not the reason for the voyage. It is aimed at increasing anti-Israel sentiment and delegitimizing the Jewish state, not improving the conditions of the Palestinians in Gaza.
In previous flotillas intercepted by the Israel Navy, instead of the “humanitarian aid” that the participants claimed to be transporting, tellingly large numbers of condoms were found. (Note: they were not part of an anti-AIDS program. Some participants obviously took the idea of being bedfellows in the same boat seriously.)
Around the world, there has been a tendency to blame Israel – and “the settlements” – as the root of all evil, as if there were no attacks and wars before Israel’s existence. Palestinianism has become a new religion. Even local politics are colored by the Palestinian flag and wrapped in a keffiyeh. Several mayors across the UK were elected last week on a platform that had more to do with Gaza than maintaining municipal services and garbage collection.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (and his wife) has fully adopted the Palestinian cause. While Mamdani reportedly has no plans to participate in the annual Israel Day Parade, he did mark “Nakba Day,” the “catastrophe” of Israel’s independence, in a social media post that demonstrated much of the warped narrative that has developed around the Palestinian movement.
The post included a video interview with “Nakba survivor” Inea Bushnaq that was later debunked by Middle East analyst Tom Gross and historian and content creator “Josh” (@_j0sh_a_), who revealed that Bushnaq’s family was originally from Bosnia, had lived in Tulkarem (a city that remained in Jordanian control from 1948 to 1967), and had chosen to move to England.
“So, in summary, this is a European with no strong roots in the land of Israel, whose family made the decision to immigrate back to the continent of their grandparents instead of remaining under Arab control in what was part of Jordan after 1948,” read Gross’s post.
He also noted that “the video makes no mention of Arab attacks on Jews before and during the 1948 war, the invasion by Arab armies after Israel’s declaration of independence that was meant to eradicate the nascent state, the rejection of the UN partition plan that would have created a Jewish and an Arab state, or the expulsion of Jews from parts of Jerusalem that came under Jordanian control.”
More than 850,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands in 1948, with Israel’s establishment, outnumbering the approximately 700,000 “Palestinian refugees” created at the same time, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn Jewish state.
Palestinian leaders and their supporters continue to call for the “right of return,” to enable “Palestinian refugees,” including those born generations after 1948, to move to Israel rather than a Palestinian state, thus destroying the nature and purpose of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state.
Incidentally, many viewers of Mamdani’s video noted that a “Visit Palestine” poster seen in the background was designed by Jewish artist Franz Kraus to encourage travel and immigration to pre-state Israel – a Zionist message hijacked to become a Palestinian prop.
No wonder many Jewish leaders chose to avoid Mamdani’s “Jewish Heritage Month” Shavuot celebration at Gracie Mansion this week.
Senior Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah member indicted in US
The nature of global jihad could be seen in the indictment last week in Manhattan of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Sa’adi, a senior member of the Iraqi Kataib Hezbollah terrorist organization, acting on behalf of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI), and affiliated with Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force.
Al-Sa’adi was reportedly arrested by US authorities following his detention in Turkey. He is allegedly behind the spate of firebombings and attacks on targets in France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, and Canada. HAYI claimed responsibility for the stabbing attack on two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green neighborhood last month.
The threats of terrorist regimes armed with unconventional weapons have not disappeared. Knocking out the nuclear facilities of Iraq in 1981, Syria in 2007, and Iran in 2025 was not Israeli aggression. It should be cause for celebration for the entire free world – if the word “free” is to remain relevant.