The Jabotinsky Movement, joins with Jews the world over and mourns the tragic loss of Lori Gilbert-Kaye Z”L who was murdered at the Chabad of Poway on the last day of the Passover festival.
“That this coldblooded murderer committed this atrocity exactly six months after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting is not lost on us,” stated Moshe Phillips, National Director of the U.S. Division of Herut North America.
“The words we recited at the Seder from the Haggadah “In every generation they rise up against us” echoed in our minds as the news reports assaulted us with the story of this latest deadly attack on U.S. Jews. The same anti-Jewish conspiracy theories that animate many in the Islamic world, neo-Nazis, Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and other haters seems to have motivated this killer as well. The only answer to such lone wolf attackers is stronger security and stronger Jewish Unity,” continued Phillips.
Herut calls upon all Jews, wherever they are, to take concrete steps to internalize the lessons from this attack: the importance of both physical security and Jewish Unity and that these two lessons are bound together now just as they have been since ancient times.
“Jews must be prepared at all times to defend one another. This is one of the main themes of the life of the great Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) who is the inspiration of the Herut movement,” stated Karma Feinstein-Cohen, the executive director of World Herut and a member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency.
Jabotinsky led the Organization for Jewish Self-Defense in Odessa before World War One and in the aftermath of the infamous Kishinev Pogrom he worked with fellow Jewish leaders there. He later organized the Haganah self defense unit in Jerusalem after World War One. In the years before World War Two he crisscrossed Europe again and again urging young Jews to learn self-defense and prepare to defend the Jewish community. Some of those Jews listened and joined in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, fought with the Bielski partisans, and rescued Jews from Nazi Occupied Europe. Even before World War Two Jabotinsky pleaded with young Jews to make aliyah, that is to immigrate to the Land Of Israel, and save themselves.
“That this violent attack was launched just days before the Yom HaShoah memorial to the Holocaust is no coincidence,” said Phillips. “The only answer to such lone wolf attackers is a dual program of stronger security and stronger Jewish Unity.” Herut North America – The Jabotinsky Movement, urges all Jews to remain vigilant and keep security top of mind.
The words of Jabotinsky written when he memorialized the great Zionist hero and fighter Yosef Trumpeldor who died with a weapon in hand as he defended fellow Jews in the Galilee at Tel Chai in 1920, come to mind at this time: “Tolstoy and Gandhi [said] that turning the other cheek influences the worst enemy more than a strong hand. This is a nice and delicate theory, buy this does not mean that it is true. The best proof of this lies before our very eyes and is called the history of the Galut (i.e. Diaspora, Exile). We Jews have tried it. Not only have we tried, but we have systematically carried it out with superhuman patience in the course of many generations… Trumpeldor was the leader of Jews capable of defending themselves.”
Herut North America, is a twenty year old international movement for Zionist pride and education and more about Herut can be found here: https://herutna.org/.
