war

Deal strengthens Iran

Many American Jews have given up on the Democratic Party. Seeing intractable opponents of Israel within its congressional ranks, many Jewish and pro-Israel voters decided that their best or only hope was within the Republican Party.

This trend was based partly on the seemingly knee-jerk antizionism of a chunk of the Democrats’ congressional caucus and by the oft-repeated idea that Donald Trump is the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.

There are myriad problems with these assumptions.

First, abandoning one party in a two-party system is a high-risk strategy. Putting all eggs in one basket is not a wise approach in any scenario.

It is especially unwise in a scenario where the egg basket is controlled by a mercurial figure who has demonstrated no consistent loyalty to any person or idea, and whose fits of rage are directed at ostensible allies as often as they are at enemies.

The US-Israeli war with Iran earlier this year held the potential for a complete reshaping of the Middle East region. The defeat of the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran would have tectonically altered the course of the region’s history, eliminating the greatest source of state-sponsored terror, massively (and further) reducing the capacity of Israel’s nearest enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

Based at least partly on the idea that regime change must come from within Iran, the United States in particular (but Israel as a partner in the war) stopped short of pursuing regime change.

The resolution to that war – the memorandum of understanding and ongoing talks aimed at a lasting cessation of violence – is apparently intended to prevent Iran’s drive toward nuclear military capacity. Perhaps it will.

At the same time, however, although concrete details are suspiciously sketchy, indications suggest that Iran is likely to come out of the war not chastened, but strengthened.

What is known about the apparent accord drafted by the United States and Iran is that it will deluge the Islamic regime in hundreds of billions of dollars in “reconstruction and development” funds. Time was that the defeated in a war paid reparations. Under the Trump doctrine, it seems, the historical penance is reversed. The defeated now apparently receive unprecedented windfalls. And this reputed $300 billion avalanche of cash does not include the freeing up another colossal sum of currently frozen Iranian assets.

Many commentators had suggested that a debilitated and humiliated Iran, economically devastated by the war, would be weakened to the point where the Iranian people would be able to rise up and overthrow their oppressors.

Instead, it appears that the regime will see itself in an erstwhile unimagined place of wealth and triumph.

The widespread idea that a weakened Iranian regime would lead the populace to revolution based on continued and worsening daily economic realities seems likely to be averted by a cash bonanza that will allow the ayatollahs to bribe their populace into complacency.

Worse for everyone, the flush regime will be able to rearm Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and its broader network of evildoers.

What several weeks ago looked like the potential for the greatest realignment for the better in regional history now appears like the worst possible outcome. Iran seems to be given a free hand to pursue its darkest agendas, bankrolled by the “peace agreement” improbably crafted by the author of the 1980s bestseller The Art of the Deal.

If there is a single lesson here for Canadians and citizens in other democracies, it is that we must not allow the well-being of the bilateral relationship with Israel to become politicized. Party regulars in challenging environments must remain and fight, rather than abandon the traditional multipartisan approach to Israeli security.

There can be no denying that, at present, one party in Canada has a near-monopoly on pro-Israel policy. This appeared to be the case in the United States until a few hours ago. We can see how quickly things can change, leaving Israel effectively friendless at the highest levels.

Defending Israel in centrist and leftist political environments may seem challenging if not futile. But abandoning those spaces to haters because a mouthy carpetbagger comes along saying the right things until he turns like a mad dog on those who thought they were his friends leaves us in the worst imaginable spot.

Together in mourning

Geoffrey Druker, who leads the community’s annual memorial ceremony, consoles a young speaker on Yom Hazikaron. (photo from Geoffrey Druker)

Emotions were close to the surface April 20 at Vancouver’s annual Yom Hazikaron commemoration. The Jewish community gathered at Temple Sholom to mark Israel’s day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism – an evening that bridged decades of loss with the raw immediacy of the present.

Geoffrey Druker, who has led the annual ceremony for many years, shared multiple stories spanning decades, reflecting the losses in Israel’s many wars and incessant terror attacks.

A photograph from 2005 showed four young commanders from the Golani Brigade. Within a year, two of them – Benji Hillman and Roi Klein – would be killed in the Second Lebanon War. Hillman died in battle and, six days later, Klein was killed after throwing himself on a grenade to save his soldiers.

Nearly two decades later, the tragedy continued.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the two surviving commanders in the photo – Roi Levy and Yizhack Ben Bassat – rushed from their homes to defend Israeli communities under attack. Levy was killed that day at Kibbutz Re’im. Two months later, Ben Bassat was killed during the war in Gaza.

Col. Yizhack Ben Bassat’s sister, Hamutal, is a member of the Vancouver community and lit a candle in his memory.

In the 40 days of Operation Roaring Lion, the initial war with Iran, Druker said more than 20 civilians and 13 soldiers were killed. Among the civilians killed was Ofer Moskovitz.

“He was better known in the region and throughout Israel as ‘Pushko,’” said Druker. He was a farmer in charge of the avocado orchard of Kibbutz Misgav Am, which is located right on the border with Lebanon, in Vancouver’s partnership region of the Upper Galilee.

“Veteran members of our Federation partnership committee met with him numerous times during visits to the region,” said Druker. “He was 60 years old.

“Tonight we remember them all,” Druker said, as the congregation rose for a moment of silence.

The ceremony moved between individual stories and collective grief, underscoring the scale of loss while emphasizing its personal nature.

The evening became intensely personal with the remembrance of Ben Mizrachi, the young Vancouver man killed at the Nova music festival.

“Ben did not run away to save himself when he had the chance,” his mother had said in a previous address that was recounted. “He showed tremendous courage … as he tried to save others.”

This year, the graduate of King David High School was remembered by his uncle, Mooshon Mizrachi.

Many other stories were read aloud and relatives and community members read Yizkor and lit candles, transforming the ceremony into a living bridge between Vancouver and Israel.

“These past years, Israel has been engaged in wars on five fronts,” Druker noted, referencing the sustained conflict that has affected every part of the country.

The story of brothers Amit and Yigal Vax, killed defending their community during the Oct. 7 attacks, was told as a recollection of that morning – sirens, explosions and the sudden realization that terrorists had entered their village. The account described fear giving way to terror, as residents hid in safe rooms as gunfire echoed outside.

“Amit … heard gunfire … grabbed his weapon … and was killed,” Druker recounted. His brother Yigal, armed only with a machete, was also killed trying to defend their home.

Sivan Keidar, a member of the extended Vax family, lit a candle in their memory.

Throughout the ceremony, music and ritual provided a framework for mourning. Songs such as “Ad Machar” (“Until Tomorrow”) and “Makom L’de’aga” (“A Place to Worry”) reflected the emotional landscape of grief.

Shinshinim, Israeli teenagers participating in a year-of-service program in Vancouver, spoke about the legacy they have inherited – one shaped by wars they did not experience directly, but which continue to define their lives.

Eliyahu Kaminsky of Congregation Schara Tzedeck synagogue recited the memorial prayer El Maleh Rachamim.

Downhill after Trump?

Left to right: Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver chief executive officer Ezra Shanken, Temple Sholom Senior Rabbi Dan Moskovitz and commentator and author Yossi Klein Halevi. (photo by Pat Johnson)

The special relationship between the United States and Israel is at its greatest peak, according to American-Israeli thinker and commentator Yossi Klein Halevi. The bad news is, he predicts, it’s all downhill from here.

In conversation with Temple Sholom’s Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, Klein Halevi warned that, whoever succeeds US President Donald Trump, it is almost inevitable that the next American leader will be less supportive of Israel.

“After Trump, the deluge,” said Klein Halevi. “There really is this sense of this moment as bittersweet. We have never been in a closer alignment with the United States than now.… This is really the culminating moment of the special relationship, that it doesn’t get any better than that.”

Were Vice-President J.D. Vance, a Republican, to become president, Klein Halevi warned, the US-Israeli relationship would almost certainly deteriorate.

“If it is just about any Democrat, it’s not going to be good,” he said. “In some cases, it would be extremely negative. So, there’s a sense that this is sort of the final play.”

Change is inevitable in Israeli politics, as well, he argued. Klein Halevi emphatically believes Netanyahu will not be reelected. The only question, he said, is whether someone else can cobble together a workable majority.

Klein Halevi is scholar-in-residence at Temple Sholom and the event April 23 was presented in cooperation with the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and one of Israel’s most influential and widely read public intellectuals, exploring Israeli identity, Jewish peoplehood, faith and the moral complexities of power. His books, including Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour and Like Dreamers, have shaped critical conversations across the Jewish world, according to Karen Kollins, the institute’s director of Canada, who introduced him.

Kollins described her organization as a leading Jewish think tank and educational centre working in Israel and across North America to “help the Jewish people engage thoughtfully and courageously with the most complex moral, religious and political challenges of our time.”

Klein Halevi co-hosts, with the institute’s president, Donniel Hartman, the think tank’s award-winning weekly podcast For Heaven’s Sake, which focuses on the moral aspects of issues affecting Israel, world Jewry and Zionism.

The stresses of living in Israel, always intense, have been unprecedentedly exacerbated in recent years, said Klein Halevi in his conversation with Moskovitz.

“This has been Israel’s longest war,” he said, noting that reservists have been called up for very long tours, upending families, businesses and society at large. “I think that we’re going to start seeing the cracks in the next generation.”

Even as new olim (immigrants) are arriving from France and elsewhere, he said, more and more Israelis are questioning whether they and their children have a future in the country.

“At what point do Israelis start to say, I – we – can’t do this anymore?” Klein Halevi asked.

Disenchantment is further aggravated by widespread dissatisfaction with the government.

“We’ve never had a government in wartime that more than half the country doesn’t trust,” he said. “When you combine that with the endless pressure, there’s this sense that I think many young Israelis have of, What’s the future here right now?”

In contrast, the post-Oct. 7 societal unity, while fraying over time, remains a uniquely enveloping Israeli phenomenon.

Moskovitz asked if the war with Iran has been successful.

“I think the question is, What were the realistic expectations going into this war?” Klein Halevi replied.

He accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of prioritizing his own political interests ahead of those of the country, as well as raising expectations of not only eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat but deposing the Islamic regime.

“So, he was plugging this idea of total victory,” said Klein Halevi. “There’s not going to be a total victory.”

Setting back Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been successful, but regime change in Iran will come only from internal forces, he said.

From that perspective, he believes that, in the near to medium term, the Iranian regime is finished.

“When you lose the legitimacy of your people or, to put it more strongly, when you massacre tens of thousands of your own citizens, there’s no recovery from that,” he said. “You’ve decisively lost your legitimacy.”

Klein Halevi said that Israel, for decades, has fallen into Iran’s trap, engaging with Iran’s proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis – instead of confronting the source of the conflict, which is Iran.

“This war will be resolved not in Lebanon, and not in Gaza,” he said. “It will be resolved in Tehran.”

Responding to critics of Israel, Klein Halevi said he has high standards for Israeli morality, but all things have context.

“[Israel] was never an exemplar of democracy in an absolute sense,” he said, “but it was very much an exemplar of a democracy in conditions of extremity. No democracy anywhere has experienced the kind of sustained opposition – war, terrorism, siege, diplomatic boycott – that Israel has known since literally the day of its birth. The fact that we have managed to sustain an imperfect democracy is extraordinary.… And then when you bring in wave after wave of traumatized refugees who themselves come from countries with no democratic [traditions] – 90% of Israelis do not come from the West; they come from the Middle East or Eastern Europe, and yet we have managed to sustain a credible democracy. That, to me, is really the glory of Israeli democracy.

“If you strip away the context, which is what the critics of Israel do … they just leave the fact that, well, Arab Israelis don’t have full rights – and that’s true. And, for me, that’s a scandal,” he said. “But it’s also a scandal that I understand, because I can’t think of another more complicated minority/majority dynamic than having as your main minority people who are culturally and even to some extent politically aligned with the enemy you’re fighting.”

Moskovitz asked how Israeli media covers antisemitism in the diaspora and whether Israelis are conscious of the extent of the crisis.

“It is reported the way the Israeli media would cover an Israeli crisis,” said Klein Halevi. “It’s very much seen as a major Israeli story. That’s good news and bad news. It’s good news that the Israeli public really cares about the diaspora more so than in the past.”

Conversely, he said, the traditional Zionist mindset toward the diaspora tends to assume that, if Jews around the world are not making aliyah en masse, the situation they are facing worldwide can’t be that bad.

Since Oct. 7, Klein Halevi said, there has been an upsurge of spirituality and Jewish observance, as well as a resurgence of creativity in music and art. He also noted a shift within some components of the ultra-Orthodox, with “a whole new ideological stream called Israeli Haredi,” that is, ultra-Orthodox who want to be more integrated into society while maintaining the differences that matter most to them.

Amy Frankel, Temple Sholom president, welcomed the packed sanctuary and said that the program and others like it would not be possible without the generosity of the late Jack Lutsky, whose wife, Susan Mendelson, and brother, Peter Lutsky, recently established Temple Sholom’s scholar-in-residence endowment fund as a perpetual benefit to the congregation and the broader community.

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, thanked Klein Halevi.

המלחמות של נתניהו וטראמפ

ראש ממשלת ישראל בנימין נתניהו ונשיא ארצות הברית דונלד טראמפ פתחו במלחמה נגד איראן, הנחשבת למסוכנת ביותר. לשני המנהיגים הללו לא הייתה תוכנית מסודרת לגבי המלחמה באיראן, והם כנראה לא חשבו מספיק על התוצאות ההרסניות שלה. הן מבחינת כמות הנפגעים הגדולה, הנזק לרכוש והנזק לכלכלה העולמית. ולא פחות הגרימה ללחץ נפשי גדול מאוד לאזרחי ישראל שצריכים כל העת לחפש מקלטים ומקומות להגן על עצמם, מפני הטילים מאיראן ושל החיזבאללה מלבנון – שהגיעו בכמויות עצומות. הקלישאה אומרת כי ידוע איך מלחמה מתחילה אך לא ידוע כיצד היא תסתיים. זה נכון מאוד לגבי המלחמה הנוכחית

המלחמה עם איראן משרתת בין היתר את הקברניטים שפתחו בה נתניהו טראמפ. נתניהו מחפש לבסס את עצמו כמנהיג ביטחוני ממעלה ראשונה שהרחיק את הסיכון האיראני, תוך שהוא מנצל את העליה בפופולריות שלו בישראל, לקראת הבחירות שאמורות להיערך בתוך מספר חודשים. יש שחושבים שהוא מסוגל להמשיך במלחמה עד הבחירות, או ליצור מלחמה אחרת, כדי לדחות אותן. ואילו טראמפ מבקש להשכיח מהציבור האמריקני את פרשת תיקי אפשטיין שכוללת מידע חדש גם עליו. במקביל הוא מבקש להציג את עצמו בתור הנשיא האמריקאי היחידי שביטל את הסכנה האיראנית. ובכך בעצם הוא בוגד בבוחריו הרבים שקיוו שהוא יעסוק בפתרון בעייות הפנים של ארה”ב והכלכלה בראשה, ולא בפתיחת מלחמות חדשות שעולות מיליארדי דולרים

בתקופת הנשיא ברק אובמה נחתם הסכם הגרעין בין מדינות המערב לאיראן שמנע ממנה להתקדם בפרויקט. הסכם זה כלל פיקוח הדוק על מה שאיראן עשתה בנושא הגרעין, אך טראמפ בקדנציה הראשונה שלו, שמע בעצת נתניהו וביטל את ההסכם. מרבית גורמי הביטחון בישראל טענו שזו הייתה טעות קשה לבטל את הסכם הגרעין עם איראן, אך זה לא הטריד ממש את שני מנהיגים אלה, שלאור כך, מנהלים עכשיו מלחמה קשה מול איראן. הפופולריות של נתניהו וטראמפ בעולם ממשיכה לרדת פלאים. נתניהו עדיין נחשב פופולרי יחסית בישראל, בקרב למעלה משלושים אחוז מהאוכלוסיה, אך מצבו של טראמפ בסקרים בארה”ב הולך ומחמיר. טראמפ שחושש שהמפלגה הרפובליקנית תאבד את הרוב שלה בסנאט ובקונגרס, ינסה בכל דרך לפגוע בתקינות בחירות האמצע של ארה”ב, שגם הן אמורות להיערך עד סוף השנה

כך או כך לאזרחים בארץ פשוט נמאס מהמלחמה הנוכחית כאשר כל העת עפים על המדינה עשרות טילים מאיראן ומלבנון. לא זכורה תקופה כזו בישראל מעולם. כבר כשנתיים וחצי שמתנהלת מלחמה בישראל, שהחלה לאחר הטבח של השבעה באוקטובר. מתי יהיה כבר הסוף לכך ונוכל לחזור למסגרת חיים נורמלית שואלים רבים בארץ. התקופה הקשה והבלתי נתפסת הזו גרמה לישראלים לא מעטים לעזוב את המדינה. גם האנטישמיות הגואה בעולם לא מרתיעה אותם

לפי נתוני מדינת ישראל לפני כשנתיים למעלה משמונים אלף ישראלים עזבו לחו”ל, ואילו אשתקד כשבעים אלף ישראלים עזבו לחו”ל. במקביל יש פיחות משמעותי במספר הישראלים החוזרים לגור במדינה. כצפוי הסיבות העיקריות לגידול המשמעותי בירידה הן המצב הבטחוני ולאחר מכן חוסר היציבות הפוליטית ובעיקר המהפכה המשפטית. גם לחוסר יציבות בכלכלה הישראלית יש משקל בהחלטה של הישראלים לעזוב. יצויין שחלק מהעוזבים הם עולים חדשים שהגיעו לישראל בשנים האחרונות ועזבו לאחר זמן קצר. במונחים כספיים מדובר בנזק של כמיליארד שקל בשנה לישראל

לא ברור מתי ישראל תחזור לתקופה שלפני המלחמה האחרונה והשקט יחזור על כנו. יתכן ומנהיגים חדשים בישראל ובארה”ב יעזרו בקידום היציבות באזור

Survival not passive

Driving south along Oak Street on a recent sunny spring morning, it was hard not to feel the hope of renewal. Paralleling Vancouver Talmud Torah is a majestic line of cherry blossoms in full flourish. A few metres on, outside Congregation Beth Israel, waves of daffodils tell the cyclical story of nature and regeneration.

If hope itself were temporal, springtime would be its incarnation. Sometimes, though, recognizing and feeling hope can take effort.

For many of us, the just-ended celebration of Jewish redemption and rebirth held special resonance, as it has since 2023. The ageless stories, relived at the seder, remain so relevant. We are living through a period that feels, at once, ancient and immediate, because hatred has resurfaced so ferociously and wears familiar disguises.

The redemption of the last hostages from Gaza and the end of that war gave little reprieve before a new war began in a cycle with which Israelis are all too familiar. Jewish history, though, teaches that darkness is never the whole story.

Seeking peace is a central obligation in the Jewish tradition. But Jewish law, halachah, also acknowledges the role of force when necessary. Jewish survival has never been passive; it has never been the result of favourable conditions. It has been an act of will – a refusal to accept that the present moment, however dark, is permanent. From the destruction of the Temples to the expulsions of Europe and the Levant, from the crusades and pogroms of the Middle Ages to the ashes of the 20th century, Jewish history has been punctuated by chapters that seemed like endings. And yet, they were not.

Jewish hope is not blind. It is strategic – necessary and unavoidable. Consider what has happened in just the past century – an epoch that, in the annals of Jewish time, is the blink of an eye. A people nearly annihilated rebuilt not only our lives, but our language, our culture and our sovereignty. The rebirth of Jewish life in our ancestral homeland was not inevitable. It was improbable.

War is tragedy. There are no easy moral lessons in suffering, no easy narrative that redeems loss. But history demonstrates that moments of profound rupture can create the conditions for transformation. As David Ben-Gurion said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”

The peace between Israel and Egypt followed a devastating war. The Abraham Accords emerged from a recognition that endless conflict was untenable. It is not naïve to hope that, from the current devastation, a new framework might eventually emerge – one that prioritizes stability, dignity and coexistence over perpetual violence.

The same is true of the surge in antisemitism globally. It is alarming, yes. But it is also exposing something that has long simmered beneath the surface. Ideas that were once coded are now explicit. Relationships that were once assumed are now being tested. Perhaps, in these challenges lies opportunity.

There is a growing recognition that Jew-hatred and Israel-hatred are not isolated prejudices, but warning signs. Individuals and communities are standing ground and pushing back. Young Jews and “Oct. 8 Jews” – whose connections to Jewishness were limited until the shock of renewed hatreds motivated new inquiries into their identities – are rising to the moment.

Non-Jewish allies are speaking out, showing their support in their actions and presence. Take, for example, those daffodils at Beth Israel – planted in memory of those people murdered in the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the garden was inspired by a non-Jewish ally. (See jewishindependent.ca/flowers-for-those-murdered.)

The story of Passover does not promise that the journey will be easy. It does not deny the existence of hardship or doubt. It does insist that liberation is possible. And this idea is not just tradition. It is necessary and an obligation.

On war and antisemitism

Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, spoke with Canadian media on March 9. (photo from Consulate General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada)

A terror attack against Canadian Jews on par with the Bondi Beach attack in Australia last December is inevitable if leaders in this country do not address the growing antisemitism crisis, according to Israel’s deputy foreign minister.

In an interview with the Independent Monday, Sharren Haskel reacted to recent shootings at Toronto synagogues and a larger trend of antisemitic acts.

“This will end in blood if the government is not taking serious actions. This is going to end exactly like the Bondi massacre,” she said.

Haskel is attuned to the Canadian situation because she was born in this country – one of only three Canadian-born individuals in Israeli history to sit in the Knesset. Her father lives in Canada and she has other family members here, who she visits frequently.

“I was always so proud of Canada being such a safe haven for Jews,” she said, calling Canada a place where acceptance of minorities, tolerance and coexistence have been strong, defining values.

“And to know where Canada was and where it is today is absolutely devastating,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking for me, and I think that not enough people truly understand the danger the Jewish community is [facing].”

Shootings at Jewish institutions and other acts of vandalism and violence have made Canada, according to an Israeli government report last year, the “champion on antisemitism.”

“It’s insane,” said Haskel.

When a racialized or other minority community in Canada expresses discomfort with a situation, she said, significant steps are taken to alleviate the problem.

Jews do not enjoy a parallel level of empathy, she said. “[Jews] say I am violently being attacked. I’m not allowed to enter my classes. I’ve been beaten. My business was shot at,” she said. “And nothing. Nothing.”

Elected officials have allowed the situation to go too far, said Haskel.

“The government is not setting a very clear red line,” she said. “We are far beyond words. Words don’t matter anymore. This is about actions now.”

The deputy foreign minister added that Canadians, too often, demonstrate inappropriate responses to international events. Critics of Israeli military approaches to Hamas and to the Iranian regime are coming from a place of privilege.

“In Canada, you are very lucky,” she said. “This is one of the most peaceful countries, you enjoy its freedom, and many people in the younger generation have received that freedom on a silver platter. This is not the case in the Middle East. Israel has faced a six-fronted war for the last two years against six different armies – all of them sponsored, trained, armed by this vile, fanatical regime in Iran.”

The Iranian regime has also undermined Israel’s neighbours, she noted, destroying Lebanon’s politics, social fabric and culture. In Syria, Iran backed the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which was overthrown in 2024 after a civil war in which the government explicitly targeted and murdered its own citizens, particularly minorities, killing at least 300,000 people and possibly as many as 650,000.

“It’s very easy to speak from a very comfortable, liberated place,” said Haskel. “But our reality in the Middle East is a very difficult and harsh one, where we are still fighting for our survival, for our freedom, for our rights as minorities here in this region against very extreme, radical, fanatical terrorist organizations and terrorist regimes.”

Haskel hedged on whether Israel’s war aim in the current conflict with Iran is regime change.

“The goal is to take out the long-term existential threat over Israel,” she said. “This is how we define it, and this is the goal of the war.”

That involves taking out Iran’s nuclear program, she said, as well as its ballistic missile program, and neutralizing the experts who are developing, manufacturing and advancing tools for mass destruction. This war is aimed at conclusively ending that threat, she said.

Past Israeli military and covert actions against the Iranian nuclear program resulted in continued Iranian determination to rebuild, according to Haskel.

“They didn’t get the message of our capability, of how determined we are that they will not be able to reach that master plan of annihilation of the state of Israel,” she said. “They’ve been working tirelessly on renovating, on re-creating, on reconstructing, all of that over again. And we are at the point where we say, look, you know, we cannot go every year into an operation like that to eliminate an immediate threat like a nuclear weapon, mass destruction, disruptive weapons.”

Haskel stops short of declaring whether that requires regime change, echoing US President Donald Trump, who has urged Iranians themselves to overthrow their government.

She is hopeful that the US-Israel actions will open a path “for the Iranian people to liberate themselves and to change these fanatical tyrants who have been abusing and torturing them for so many years.”

Should the regime be replaced by a Western-oriented government, the impacts would be broader than the Middle East. For example, Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran, is engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering in Latin America to help fund their operations, she noted.

Haskel believes that the world should be grateful to the United States and Israel.

“President Trump and Prime Minister [Binyamin] Netanyahu are leading right now an effort to protect humanity,” she said. “Every leader and every sensible person around the world needs to ask themselves who they want as their friends and who would come to their help when they really needed it the most.

“During our time in history, when freedom, real freedom, is in danger,” she said, “we are very fortunate to have two leaders like Trump and Netanyahu that stood up and took actions to defend humanity, to defend Western democracies.”

Haskel said that representing Israel carries a profound responsibility not only to the country itself but also to Jewish communities around the world. For her, that responsibility is deeply personal, particularly when it comes to Canada, where she has such close ties. Hearing directly from relatives and friends about rising fear and insecurity has reinforced her sense of duty.

Haskel, who has served as deputy foreign minister since 2024, was first elected to the Knesset in 2015. She was born in Toronto to an Israeli father and a Moroccan mother who met in Paris. The family lived in Canada before moving to Israel when Sharren was a year old. She was raised in Kfar Saba and studied in the United States and Australia. First elected on the Likud slate, she joined Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party in 2021.

Moment of opportunity

From the first of Vancouver’s weekly vigils for Israeli hostages, after the 10/7 attacks, members of the local Iranian community were a welcome presence. Asked by the Independent why he was moved to join the mostly Jewish crowd at one of the first vigils, an Iranian-Canadian man explained that no one knows better than Iranians the enemy Israel is up against.

Now, it is the Iranians in Vancouver who are gathering regularly to show solidarity with their families halfway around the world. And it is uplifting not only to see Israeli flags and Jewish community members amid the throngs, but additionally inspiring that the Jewish presence is as profoundly welcomed at these gatherings as the Iranian-Canadian support was at our own community’s vigils.

The escalating confrontation between the United States, Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran is fraught with danger. War in the Middle East rarely unfolds in neat or predictable ways. Yet, for all the risks, the present moment might represent a genuine opportunity.

For more than four decades, the regime in Tehran has destabilized the Middle East. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic has invested enormous resources in regional proxy networks, backing armed groups across the Middle East while suppressing dissent and freedoms at home. Iran is one of the world’s foremost state sponsors of terror and the primary backer of both Hamas and Hezbollah – Israel’s most dangerous terrorist enemies.

Many Iranians living outside Iran, probably most, support efforts to weaken or eliminate the Islamist regime in Tehran. Diaspora communities across North America and Europe include people who fled political persecution, censorship and the stifling of basic freedoms.

Domestic opposition – the courageous Iranians who have taken to the streets in opposition to government tyranny – has not dislodged the regime, obviously. Many hope that the US-Israel military action could create an environment that might topple it.

The Israelis and Americans, it needs to be noted, have both explicit and less overt objectives in this war. One stated aim, of many unclear objectives, is to ensure that Iran is prevented from developing nuclear weapons. Regime change is not an explicit goal. The US president has instead called on the Iranian people to take this opportunity to continue to rise up against their oppressors. However, the US administration has not made it clear that ending the theocracy is their aim or that the US will be there for the Iranian people if the war’s other geopolitical aims are met.

For Israelis, regime change in Iran probably presents the greatest chance for stability the country has experienced, at least in the past four decades.

A post-theocratic Iran might pursue normal relations with its neighbours and with the West. It could redirect vast resources away from proxy wars and toward economic development.

None of this, of course, is guaranteed or, perhaps, even likely. History offers sobering reminders that the collapse of authoritarian regimes can produce chaos as easily as freedom.

Iran is not Iraq in 2003 or Afghanistan in 2001. It has a large, educated population, a long, cohesive national history and a strong sense of cultural identity that predates the current regime. Civil society – though heavily suppressed – has shown remarkable resilience, from women’s rights movements to waves of protests demanding political reform. These internal forces matter a great deal. Ultimately, the future of Iran will be determined not by foreign militaries but by the Iranian people.

That is why the current moment, dangerous as it is, should also be understood as holding possibility. If external pressure weakens the regime enough to create space for internal change, Iranians may have a chance to shape a different future.

The risks are undeniable. Escalation could spiral. More civilian lives will be lost – especially as a regime saturated with end-times theology sees its very survival threatened. The region could face new volatility before it finds stability. Civil war could break out.

Sometimes, though, the status quo is the deeper danger. The Islamist regime in Tehran has spent decades exporting conflict and constraining the aspirations of its people. As long as it remains in power, Israel and other countries in the region will not know dependable calm or have much chance to fulfil any dreams of peace.

For the Iranian people, for the region and for the world, this may be one of those rare instances when risk and opportunity arrive together. What follows will depend not only on military outcomes but on whether the international community – and Iranians themselves – can seize the chance to build something better.

As events unfold half a world away, something positive is happening closer to home. In this time of danger and war, it is uplifting to witness Jewish British Columbians standing alongside our Iranian neighbours as they have stood alongside us in our most challenging moments.

Songs in war of peace

Naomi Cohn Zentner shared how music in the time of war can offer resilience and hope. (photo from Naomi Cohn Zentner)

Earlier this month, ethnomusicologist Naomi Cohn Zentner gave the lecture Music and War: An Optimistic View. Her talk was the fourth in Kolot Mayim Reform Temple’s 2025/26 Many Voices of Jewish Music Zoom series.

Speaking from Israel, Cohn Zentner, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, examined how music in the time of war can offer resilience and hope, and is not solely about tragedy and mourning. She started with a photograph of Leonard Cohen and Israeli musician Matti Caspi, who passed away on Feb. 8, the day of her talk. The pair were performing for soldiers during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Ariel Sharon at their side.

Cohn Zentner then played two songs, composed more than a century apart: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” written during the American Civil War, and a 1967 performance by the Nachal Entertainment Troupe called “Hallelujah.”

Contrasting the two, Cohn Zentner argued that the former is a sacralizing, providential song in the war hymn tradition, seeing war very much within a religious way of life and values, while the Israeli song – with lines such as, “If there were no need for rifles anymore, then we would sing ‘Hallelujah’” and “If children could play by the border, then you’d hear their mothers sigh in relief, ‘Hallelujah’” – offers a hope for peace, or a prayer for peace.

“It’s an Israeli war song tradition, which shows just how important peace was in these fighting units,” Cohn Zentner said. “We can see this as two opposing examples of what war songs are about.

“The religious hymn of the Civil War is ‘Glory, Hallelujah.’ The conflict itself is very religious and violence, while terrifying, is also cleansing and purifying, and death and martyrdom make men free,” she said. In the Israeli song, war is de-romanticized, death is not glorified but used as a reason to end wars, life itself is considered holy, peace is the desired goal, and the music is more national and secular in outlook.

Last year, on the Israeli reality show, Hakokhav Haba (Rising Star), during which a contestant is chosen to represent the country at Eurovision, Daniel Weiss, from Kibbutz Be’eri, selected Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as one of his songs. Weiss, who lost both of his parents during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, performed a duet with Arab singer Valerie Hamaty in both Hebrew and Arabic.

“Of course, this image was so powerful and iconic – of them singing this song together in Hebrew and Arabic after everything that had happened. It was a very emotional moment,” Cohn Zentner said.

Another song Weiss performed, in honour of his parents, was “Ani Guitar” (“I Am a Guitar”) by Naomi Shemer, which contains the lyric “I remember all those who played on me before, and I say thank you.”

“This symbolic issue of a guitar, which used to be a tree, but still has in it the ability to thank all those who [have] played on him … is very, very emotional,” she said.

Weiss lost out to Yuval Raphael in the contest to represent Israel. Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music festival, performed ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” as her final song in the show. She dedicated it to those who died at Nova.

“I sing about the angels who weren’t fortunate enough to be here now. It hurts because I had this chance not only to come back [from the festival] and to live, but to fulfil my dream. There are those who stayed there, and the shadow behind me is the only thing left of them,” said Raphael, who went on to place second in the 2025 Eurovision with the song “New Day Will Rise.”

At the end of her talk, Cohn Zentner played “Not Alone,” a song penned by Doror Talmon of the band Jane Bordeaux in the weeks following Oct. 7. The song speaks to the feelings of being in the close-knit community of a kibbutz in which everyone has a role and nobody is dispensable; if one person is lost, it affects the entire community.

“The song starts by telling us about all the sad and tragic things that happened, and asks who is going to bring the kibbutz back to what it was,” Cohn Zentner said.

Then, she pointed out, there is a shift in the song to where it answers, “We’ll all extend a hand, we are not alone, and we are partners in fate, in pain and in love, as one people. We will cry and we will overcome, we’re not going to break, we’re going to come together, we have each other, the roots of the trees will go into the earth, and we’re going to be rebuilding.”

The next speaker in Kolot Mayim’s series is Joshua Jacobson, an author, composer and choral director. Jacobson, professor emeritus of music at Northeastern University in Boston, will delve into the history and ongoing evolution of Jewish music in his April 5 talk, Jewish Music: What’s That? For more information, go to kolotmayimreformtemple.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Farm transforms lives

Danny’s Farm is a leading Israeli centre for holistic healing, offering animal-assisted trauma care, among other services. (photo from Danny Stirin)

After Canadian-Israeli media personality Shai DeLuca was critically wounded in 1996 during his service in the Israel Defence Forces, the instructions from his peers were as blunt as they were unhelpful: be a man, move on.

The injury – that left him with temporary loss of use of his legs – kept him in hospital and rehabilitation for nearly a year, in an era when post-traumatic stress was rarely named, let alone treated. “Back then, PTSD wasn’t understood the way it is today,” said DeLuca. “No one had language for it. No one recognized the symptoms.”

At the end of July 2025, DeLuca traveled to a ranch southeast of Rehovot, Israel, with a Canadian organization supporting IDF veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, families of Oct. 7 victims and Israelis living with trauma caused by terror. What began as just a visit to Danny’s Farm, a unique therapeutic centre, turned into a revelation.

At the end of the tour, ranch owner and chief executive officer Danny Stirin sensed something about DeLuca and asked a pointed question – why had he not dealt with the mental after-effects of his injury?

“I felt like I didn’t even need to say a lot and he understood what I meant,” recalled DeLuca. “He said, ‘the moment you’re ready, just message me. I will be there with you every step of the way.’”

The visit was “life-changing” for DeLuca and returning to the farm later allowed him “to understand parts of my own story buried for years.”

DeLuca credits Stirin as “the person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I’ve been carrying for so many years.”

photo - Danny Stirin, left, and Shai DeLuca in conversation. DeLuca credits Stirin as “the person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I’ve been carrying for so many years" — Danny Stirin, left, and Shai DeLuca in conversation. DeLuca credits Stirin as “the person who freed me in a lot of ways from a lot of weight that I’ve been carrying for so many years.” *(photo from Shai DeLuca)*

Since its inception in 2016, Danny’s Farm has become a refuge for Israelis grappling with trauma, be it from war or terror. At first glance it looks like a ranch – stables with dozens of horses and many small animals about – but amid the pastoral view is a clinic, recognized as a leading Israeli centre for holistic, animal-assisted trauma care. Treatment rooms for art, music, bodywork and complementary medicine sit alongside the barns, and a multidisciplinary staff of psychologists, social workers and emotional-therapy instructors anchors the work with patients. The farm treats some 1,500 people each week.

Even before Oct. 7, the farm was treating children with special needs, survivors of sexual violence, and adults with complex trauma, filling a gap in an under-resourced mental-health system. Since the Hamas attacks and ensuing war, it has become a safe zone for reserve soldiers, evacuees from the south and north, and families coping with loss, dislocation and rocket fire.

For Stirin, the farm grew out of his own brush with crisis and a decision about what kind of fulfilment he sought professionally. “It’s like there’s a point in your life when you’re looking for a purpose,” he said, adding that he wanted the farm to be a tangible example for his children: “so they can see that somebody is going with his heart, all the way.”

A deeper motivation, though, was to help other people with their pain. “I felt that I have to hold the hope for others having a crisis, as I did,” he said.

Stirin’s choice to place animals at the centre of this work came from his childhood. “Since I was a boy, I had a long attraction to animals. All my life I was near them,” he said.

Born in Argentina to a grandfather who worked as a “gaucho,” or cowboy, he grew up with horses and dogs and carried that bond into adulthood. “I realized in the best way, the very powerful way, I felt the energy of the healing, just being near the simplicity of these creatures,” said Stirin.

On the farm, that idea has been formalized into a program that pairs equine therapy with group and individual treatment, and specialized tracks for traumatized children and families. The model, developed in partnership with the resilience organization Tkuma and supported by various funders, is designed to give long-term structure to people who might otherwise never access, or have access to, sustained care.

If there is a single principle guiding Danny’s Farm, it is that trauma is both ubiquitous and intensely personal. “The human soul is very fragile, and very different from one to one,” Stirin said. “The trauma … it plays with you. It can come in all kinds of different ways, shapes.”

Because the nature of trauma depends on a person’s personality, history, physical and mental structure, he said, therapists must approach treatment with “a lot of flexibility.”

“Each one needs something else. That’s what I believe,” he said.

For veterans like DeLuca, who was told to tough it out, the encounter with this kind of care was “liberating.”

Coming back to the ranch last month to introduce visiting media to the farm, he said he found at the farm the space to see his injury “through a different lens,” as part of a story that “did not have to end in silence.”

He said, “With PTSD, the challenge is not closing the door, but opening it, and dealing with it. And what Danny did was [tell] me that I don’t have to keep that door closed.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world. His website is davegordonwrites.com. His trip to Israel was co-sponsored by the Or Ofir Foundation.

Facing a complex situation

The Gaza Strip is currently divided between the Israeli-held zone (green) and Hamas territory (red). (Screenshot from Channel 14)

More than 25 months after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the consequent multi-front Middle East war, and more than one year after Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 27, 2024, Israel faces a complex geopolitical and security situation.

In the north, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) is engaged in continuous covert and overt operations to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping. The Shi’ite terrorist militia has been dealt multiple blows, first by the Mossad’s twin attack Sept. 17-18, 2024, nicknamed Operation Grim Beeper, in which thousands of hand-held pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon and Syria. On Sept. 27, the terror group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated in his Beirut bunker. On Nov. 23, the IDF eliminated Haytham Ali Tabataba’i in a missile strike on the Lebanese capital – Hezbollah’s chief of staff had been designated by the US Department of State as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2016. Washington was offering a $5 million US bounty for information on him.

Though diminished, Hezbollah is not a spent force, according to Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute who specializes in Iran, Turkey and the broader Middle East. Writing in the National Security Journal, Rubin notes that, notwithstanding the targeting of its senior leadership, Hezbollah’s financing – diaspora-linked laundering from Europe, Africa and South America and new backing from Turkey – remains resilient. He cautions that, unless Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun cuts off the money supply and disarms Hezbollah by the year’s end, the country will slide into a renewed insurgency. Trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in guerrilla tactics and bomb-making, Hezbollah will resume its terror campaign attacking Lebanese armed forces’ vehicles with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), said Rubin.

Israel has made a huge investment to literally alter the landscape of its 120-kilometre-long northern frontier into a formidable physical barrier, and to blow up cross-border tunnels. Similarly, during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon from 1985 to 2000, several strategic mountain peaks were bulldozed to no longer loom over the Upper Galilee. However, the fiasco of Oct. 7 has shown that static positions provide limited deterrence against lightning strikes by well-trained guerillas.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas – an Arabic acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamia (the Islamic Resistance Movement) – also refuses to disarm. There, too, the situation remains unclear, complicated by Israel’s assassination of the terrorist group’s leaders: Yahya Sinwar, his brother Mohammed, Mohammed Deif, Marwan Issa and Ismail Haniyeh.

image - On Oct. 22, the terrorist-linked group Samidoun hosted a panel discussion in Athens with a newly released top Hamas operative — On Oct. 22, the terrorist-linked group Samidoun hosted a panel discussion in Athens with a newly released top Hamas operative.

In October, Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of the first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas. In exchange, Hamas released 20 living Israeli hostages. On Oct. 22, the terrorist-linked group Samidoun hosted a panel discussion in Athens with the newly released top Hamas operative Abdel Nasser Issa. Known as a student of Hamas’s notorious chief bombmaker Yayha Ayyash (1966-1996), aka “the Engineer,” Issa was serving two life sentences for his involvement in two suicide bombings in 1995 that killed 20 Israeli civilians and wounded more than 100.

On Nov. 24, Palestinian Islamic Jihad turned over a coffin with the remains of Dror Or. Staff Sgt. Ran Gvili and Sudthisak Rinthalak are the last two people murdered on Oct. 7 not yet returned. Rinthalak, an agricultural worker at Kibbutz Be’eri near the border of the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, was among the more than 40 Thais killed and 31 kidnapped in Hamas’s attack.

Also in November, a flight of 153 Gazans landed in Johannesburg, after departing from Ramon Airport near Eilat. Shimi Zuaretz, a spokesperson for Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) – the Israeli body that runs civil affairs in the West Bank – confirmed that the Palestinians transited through Israel “after COGAT received approval from a third country to receive them.” That third country was South Africa.

Some 200,000 Gazans are currently living in limbo in Cairo, unable to either find a destination in which to settle or to return to their homes. Together with the estimated tens of thousands of combatants and civilians killed in the Gaza war, these numbers indicate the ongoing depopulation of the destroyed coastal enclave.

image - Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition faces a mounting campaign to reestablish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The poster above reads, “It’s time to settle in Gaza! Let’s start now! Hanukkah 5786!” — Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition faces a mounting campaign to reestablish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. The poster above reads, “It’s time to settle in Gaza! Let’s start now! Hanukkah 5786!”

With an election on the horizon in the first half of 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition faces a mounting campaign to reestablish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Daniella Weiss, head of Nachala Movement Israel, whose stated aim is to settle further into Judea and Samaria, wants to begin Jewish settlement in Gaza within “months.” According to Weiss, more than 600 families – more than 2,500 people – had already registered for an initiative to settle in new beach towns.

Many Israelis fault Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal of 9,000 settlers from Gush Katif in 2005 as the catalyst that allowed Hamas to seize power from the Palestinian Authority two years later. In turn, that violent coup laid the way for the catastrophic Oct. 7, 2023, attack on cities and kibbutzim bordering Gaza.

The Gaza Strip’s 365 square kilometres are today uneasily divided into Hamas- and Israeli-controlled sectors. Israel will not allow Türkiye or Qatar to send troops to monitor the ceasefire, nor are any other countries keen to send boots on the ground. US President Donald Trump envisions a $500-million military base near Qiryat Gat, called the US Civil-Military Coordination Centre, to assist in Gaza’s future governance and patrol of the territory.

photo - The Israeli Defence Forces have killed Muhammad Abu Shaar, the Hamas terrorist who broke into Adi Vital-Kaploun’s residence on Oct. 7, 2023, and murdered her in front of her young children. He recorded himself with Adi’s babies in the same room she was killed as a Hamas propaganda video — The Israeli Defence Forces have killed Muhammad Abu Shaar, the Hamas terrorist who broke into Adi Vital-Kaploun’s residence on Oct. 7, 2023, and murdered her in front of her young children. He recorded himself with Adi’s babies in the same room she was killed as a Hamas propaganda video. *(internet image)*

Clan and Bedouin tribal groups in Gaza are engaged in a violent internecine struggle with Hamas. And the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported on Nov. 15 that IDF commandos on motorcycles are targeting Palestinians who participated in the abduction and holding of Israelis during the Oct. 7 attack. Among the Mujahideen Brigades terrorists gunned down in Khan Yunis was Mohammed Abu Mustafa, who kidnapped Shiri Bibas and her children Kfir and Ariel from Kibbutz Nirim on Oct. 7. Also recently eliminated was Muhammad Abu Shaar, who broke into Adi Vital-Kaploun’s residence at Kibbutz Holit and murdered the Canadian-Israeli woman in front of her 4-year-old son Negev and 4-month-old toddler Eshel. Shaar then recorded himself holding her children in the same safe room where Vital-Kaploun was murdered.

Troops of the elite Nahal Brigade captured six Hamas gunmen who surrendered after a 24-hour search that followed the IDF’s collapsing of the tunnel in Rafah where the terrorists were hiding, forcing them to emerge from a shaft, the military reported. The men were taken to Israel to be questioned by the Shin Bet Klali (General Security Service). A photo released by the IDF showed four of the operatives in the army’s custody, hands tied behind their backs, next to an armoured vehicle.

“At the end of a 24-hour pursuit, all 17 terrorists who attempted to flee the underground terror infrastructure in eastern Rafah were either eliminated or apprehended,” the IDF announced. At least 30 Hamas terrorists were killed trying to flee from tunnels in Rafah last month.

photo - Last month’s winter rain flooded Gaza’s tent encampments — Last month’s winter rain flooded Gaza’s tent encampments. (photo form IDDEF)

Environmental issues are also impacting the complex situation. Last month’s winter rain flooded Gaza’s tent encampments. In Iran, a severe drought has depleted the reservoirs that provide its capital city, Tehran, with drinking water.

Symbolizing the Ayatollah regime’s crumbling control, on Nov. 12, protesters garbed in military uniforms of the Shah’s regime unfurled the banned pre-1979 lion and sun Pahlavi national flag in a Tehran metro station. Commentators have posited that the next revolution may come soon, if the taps run dry.

Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide based in Jerusalem.