The Cherubs on the Ark: Ariel and Kfir Bibas and the Question Every Accuser Must Answer

I urge any person who has accused Israel of genocide to ask themselves the following question. This question is directed specifically (but not exclusively…obviously) to those who who have children of their own, ideally two boys aged nine months and four years old. The same age as Kfir and Ariel Bibas.

In efforts of your government to retrieve them, how many civilian casualties would still NOT constitute genocide—given a scenario in which their captors are concealing themselves within civilian populations, hiding behind babies in nurseries and kindergartens hiding behind the elderly and the infirm in hospitals.

Please, offer a number. Go ahead. Please throw out a number. The truth is you won’t. You can’t. Why not? because you are looking at the scenario through the prism of your children.

How about this. Can you present a coherent thoughtful position on why you have a right to even fight to retrieve your child in the first place?

If you are attempting to “balance” your love of these two boys, the joys and central focus of your life, with the concern for civilian casualties ( we both know you’re not) then what is the logic that would permit say 500 or 2000 or 50 or even one casualty in the efforts to retrieve your two children? What would the rationale be to justify any civilian casualties for that matter?

If there IS a justification, where is the cut off and why specifically there? I’m asking to consider this question with regard to your two children, two innocent children, boys, YOUR PRECIOUS BOYS, who will never grow up to become the good, kind, generous, and productive men, husbands, fathers, and grandfathers that you will never be the opportunity to raise them to be.

Allow me to rephrase this. What is the precise number of casualties that you as a parent would have to concede that you should no longer be entitled to do everything in your power to retrieve your own child? The answer is as simple as it is powerful and true. That number doesn’t exist for your child. Yet you would shamelessly advocate just that for someone else’s child?

Imagine please, if the folks holding your two children aged nine months, and four, is the actual government of the people whose lives you are measuring against the lies of your own two children (which you’re not doing of course simply because they aren’t your children) whose governing charter openly calls for your annihilation and the genocidal murder of everyone living in your country ( from the river to the sea) based on the actual legal universally accepted norms of defining Genocide.

Imagine also that many of these civilians actually supported and openly cheered the abduction of your two boys,

Imagine also how many of them cheered while your sister was brutally molested, your grandfather tortured, while your aunt was passed around to be raped like a piece of meat ensuring a fair turn for each deprived “freedom fighter.”

Imagine if the women in your life with whom you have stood shoulder to shoulder in vocal support of and celebration of woman’s rights, went radio silent, ignoring and in the process fully condoning the massive and brutal raping of young girls, and women.

I imagine you would no doubt be scratching your head in wonder when your own government is releasing 900 more of these past and future killers in exchange for the dead bodies of your first cousin, your neighbour’s husband, and your best friend.

And by the way, just so you know, I’m not a “right wing nut job” nor do I want to see dead Palestinians. Those of you who know me understand this quite well.

Still, I need to get to the bottom of this if at least for my own sanity. Additionally, if you accuse my people of something heinous what kind of person or Rabbi would I be if I didn’t do everything in my power to expose these inherently false attributions?

That it has been so widely circulated and accepted does not point to its veracity anymore than widespread racism sexism and homophobia was and still is admissible as evidence of its rightness.

Were the moral lapse, widespread mindlessness, and gullibility merely a highly disappointing but fundamentally benign mindset it might be easier to overlook but when entire societal institutions led by a morally blighted “academia” plays right into the hands of murderers—the stakes are as high as they can get and the result is deadly.

One last thing to think about. Imagine how you would react to the widespread demonstrations on college campuses astoundingly supporting the very people holding your two boys aged 9 months and four years old. Would you congratulate them on “speaking their mind” knowing that every single one of them is falling into the very trap that will ultimately embolden these sociopathic killers to murder your two children— knowing they can do so with utter impunity? How would you feel seeing the whole world, the so called enlightened, educated and humanistic world OPENLY championing the killers who brutally murdered your babies.

The two innocent angelic Cherubs that we read about in this weeks portion, adorning the Ark of the Covenant, are ARIEL and KFIR BIBAS. Today and forever more they will adorn the hearts and minds of every Jew. They will be etched into the consciousness of every person who has resisted the pressure to subcontract their very decency to a howling mindless mob. Their image will forever haunt those who celebrated their killers, long after the spell cast on them wears off. Deservedly so.

We provided a communal space this past week at Chabad and many of you joined us to express your grief and anguish in the protective shade of community.

I want to sign off by sharing a quote from a book I began reading this week that moved me considerably. The book is called “An Apprentice” written bythe late Clarence inspector.

“Once more in her confused hesitation, what reassured her was something that had so often calmed and supported her: the knowledge that everything that exists, exists with absolute exactness and ultimately whatever she ended up doing or not doing would not escape that exactness; something the size of a pinhead would not extend by a fraction of a millimetre beyond the size of a pinhead: everything that existed was a great perfection. Except most of what existed with such perfection was, technically invisible:

the truth, clear and exact in itself, was vague and almost imperceptible upon reaching the woman. Well, she sighed, even if it wasn’t reaching me clearly, at least she knew that there was a secret meaning to the things of life. So it was she knew that she occasionally, even if somewhat confusingly, ended up sensing perfection— these thoughts again, which she was somehow using as a reminder, that because of the perfection that existed she’d end up doing the right thing.”

Much Love,

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yossi