Liat Collins

I was recently reminded of a souvenir from the days of my army service in the northern branch of the IDF’s Liaison Unit to the UN Forces. It’s a certificate that UN soldiers distributed as a self-deprecating joke in the early 1980s, in the period leading up to what would become known as the First Lebanon War, which broke out exactly 44 years ago.

The footage showed brutal images. Baton-wielding police were seen hitting pro-Palestinian supporters of the Gaza flotilla even as the demonstrators lay on the ground, their clothes scrunched up, exposing bare flesh to the blows. But don’t worry. There’s no need for an emergency session of the UN Security Council to discuss the police violence. The police caught on camera were members of the force at Bilbao airport in Spain’s Basque region, not Israeli.

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.