There are moments when the clock should stop – as if in sympathy with the skipping of one’s heartbeat – so significant are they in assessing What is Man?
Yesterday was such a moment. For the State of Israel, for the People of Israel. Indeed, for the world.
The corpses of Oded Lifshitz, 83-years-old, Shiri Bibas and her two sons, 4-year-old Ariel and 9 months-old Kfir, were returned to Israel. Except Hamas did not return Shiri’s body. The IDF said that no match was found for the purported body of Shiri Bibas. “It is an anonymous body without identification”, they said.
The Jerusalem Post reported that “available intelligence and forensic evidence from the identification process have led officials to determine that the two children were brutally murdered in captivity by terrorists in November 2023, just a month after their abduction. Kfir was murdered at 10 months old. Ariel was murdered at four years old.
The moral grotesquery of February 20, 2025 was of the same twisted, evil piece with that of October 7, 2023.
Merely hours after the four bodies crossed into Israeli territory, a number of booby-trapped buses exploded in the centre of Israel. Thankfully, the buses had been parked for the night and were empty of passengers. Had they exploded during rush of the business day, hundreds of Israeli civilians would have been slaughtered.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad teach a perverse theology that finds delight and fulfillment in the killing Jews.
But today, Jews fight back. The State of Israel fights back with its security services and the Israel Defence Forces. The People of Israel fight back by standing tall and together, by raising high the banner of our Judaism.
And the world fights back by…..
Because the clocks did not stop yesterday, we will pause this week from providing a specifically oriented GAJE update. In lieu, we offer a heart-rending eulogy for the Bibas family written by Adam Hummel. It is emotionally riveting. It is important. (He wrote it before he knew that Shiri had not been returned to Israel.)
Hummel’s article is available at: https://catchjcp.substack.com/p/a-eulogy
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We wish to remind our supporters: GAJE still awaits the decision of the Court of Appeal on our motion seeking leave to appeal the September 2024 decision by the Divisional Court that dismissed our application to bring about fairness in educational funding in Ontario.
If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com
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Shabbat shalom
Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
February 21, 2025
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 