Come Voice Your Grassroots Comments on Our Grassroots American Jewish Street
#1316 April 5,, 2026
We all live on our grassroots American Jewish street. In this time of vicious assaults on Israel and Jews, come practice what President Trump encourages us, “Be proud of who you are,” by outspokenly commenting on posts on my and others’ blogs on Our Grassroots American Jewish Street on our grassroots website, confrontingjewishissues.com.
Come Voice Your Grassroots Comments on Our Grassroots American Jewish Street
I plead in these weekly emails, which I post to “Our Grassroots American Jewish Street” on my website confrontingjewishissues.com, for U.S. Jewish grassroots to join in expressing on it what President Trump in the wake of the murderous Bondi Beach attack on Jews a few months ago urged us to do: “Be proud of who you are.”
I ask for photos of families celebrating our Jewish holidays and Jewish life milestones, of enjoying Jewish-themed vacations. I ask those of you interested to blog on the site, even if your personal views aren’t as “rightwing” as mine. And I ask for least effort of all – comment thereon on my and others’ blog posts, pro- or con- (I monitor comments for abuse, not point-of-view.)
I quote below as example and encouragement one of the comments on each of my recent posts. But let me preface this with two internet items this week showing grassroots American Jews’ must unitedly stand up for our people and homeland.
It’s not just out-and-out Jew-haters who are ill-disposed towards us these days. A Harris poll released this week on the question
“In the Israel-Hamas conflict do you support more Israel or more Hamas?”
found 53% of those aged 18 through 24 supporting Hamas versus 47% Israel. In older age brackets pro-Israel sentiment was progressively stronger, but these young adults will grow older, become more influential economically and politically in our society, replacing their elders, but their views of Israel won’t likely mature with them. This is beyond merely troubling. These young Americans aren’t favoring “poor innocent Palestinian civilians” but Hamas, proud perpetrator of the most vicious pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, who threaten such invasion “again and again.”
And the EU blasted Israel this week for passing a law providing the death sentence for terrorists convicted of murdering Israelis.
Reader Comment on my #1312, 3/8/26, Whose Friends Are They? Alas, Not Ours
We have needed friends among Christian groups – CUFI, Friends of Israel, others. But one otherwise admirable Christian denomination, the Quakers, is unduly unempathetic to our Jewish people’s homeland of Israel. To quote one sentence from the 72-page AFSC document not limited to pacifism on the Israel-Hamas conflict I cite in #1312:
“Indeed, we consider Israel’s unlawful occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip (constituting the Occupied Palestinian Territory or OPT) to be part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime.”
In his comment to my #1312, reader Ken Moskowitz asked Quakers to reconsider their characterization of Jewish homeland possession of what they call “the West bank, including East Jerusalem” as “unlawful occupation.”
“Two simple facts for Grassroots Quakers to consider: 1) There are no maps in Arabic until the twentieth century that show Palestine. The maps with Palestine are white, European, and Christian in origin. 2) At the San Remo Conference, following World War 1 and the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles, both Jews and ‘Palestinians’ were present. Both argued for a state of their own. Only one state was recognized, the Jewish one. The ‘Palestinians’ could not establish a separate identity from the greater Arab Nation.”
Reader Comment on my #1313, 3/15/26, Best Response to Trump’s Fighting Israel’s War
In #1313 I quoted ZOA’s Mort Klein that even if Israel didn’t exist, Iran’s aggressive conduct towards the U.S. made Trump’s action against it unavoidable, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. that Iran’s nuclear ambitions, terrorism support and global energy route threats required such response, and journalist Stu Bykofsky’s long list of Iranian direct and proxy actions showing that since the embassy staff hostage taking in 1979 “the ayatollahs have done everything in their power to hurt the United States, and Americans.”
Reader Bob Altman agreed that #1313 was “right on the money”:
“It addressed the two comments that are made over and over concerning the war in Iran, that the U.S. is fighting Israel’s war, and that Iran was not an imminent threat to the U.S. Stu’s listing of Iran’s involvement in the killing and maiming of our soldiers and civilians over those 47 years says it all.”
Reader Comment on #1314, 3/22/26, Our Secret Weapon: Stirring Books on Our Homeland’s 3,000 Years
You know by now I’ve accumulated a personal library of over a thousand non-fiction books on Israel, ancient and modern, of which I commend to you as stirring gripping reader a few on each of twelve categories I enumerate on the website. In #1314, I urge you to read these books as vitamin shots and to get fellow grassroots less supportive of Israel than us to read one of these books.
Reader Dan Bacine started off what I hoped with “I’m surprised you didn’t include Max Dimont’s Jews, God and History” and the tireless knowledgeable Myron Sugarman followed up:
“Jerry, your suggestion is excellent, for what is the study of history? The equal partner to human experience, and what is the result of studying history combined with human experience? … wisdom.
And what does King Solomon say about wisdom? ‘It’s a divine gift, paramount above wealth and a long life.’
“I would also add Our Man in Damascus, the story of Elie Cohen, the greatest spy story ever!
“And A Tzaddik In Our Time, the story of Rabbi Aryeh Levin, the Rabbi of the prisons during the British Mandate and Occupation.
“And if one wishes to understand the greatest mind of the Zionist Movement, The Lone Wolf by Shmuel Katz, the story of Vladimir Zev Jabotinsky, the founding father of the Revisionist Zionist Movement.
“And Lastly, Rebbe, Life and Teachings of Menachem Schneerson, The Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History, by Joseph Telushkin.
Reader Comment on #1315, 3/29/26. Temple Mount – Evidence of Our Jerusalem Claim Written in Stone
In this #1315 I assailed even otherwise informed Israelis who write “The Western Wall prayer area is all that remains of the Temple Mount.” I cited archeological architect Leen Ritmeyer’s descriptions of still-standing structures along all four walls, quoting Elder of Ziyon that they’re proof on the Temples, including, working back a millennium from the Romans’ substantial destruction, Herodian, Hasmonean and even First Temple-time remains. We need to make more widely known this extant evidence of our Jerusalem claim that’s written in stone.
Reader Ernest Kraus commented “I remember being told a lot of this when Alice and I were there,” to which I replied in effect “good, we need more of that.”
But reader Bob Slater pointed out what also exists:
“Jerry, I believe your facts are right BUT the mosque [i.e. Dome of the Rock] has been standing for centuries and I do not think that history can be erased NOW. Some compromise is needed.”
I replied that while we cannot compromise on our claim to our homeland’s heart & soul, historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria, my dream is of eventual peace between Israel and surrounding Arabs, grounded in their recognition of Jews, Judaism and our homeland as indigenous to the Mideast, that I believe the Abraham [n.b.] Accords are a meaningful stride towards that, and that perhaps mutual recognition of our respective reverences for the Rock enshrined in the Dome of the Rock can help both peoples achieve that.
“Bob, thanks for this comment. I end my book [Here & Now: U.S. Jews and the Issues Confronting Us] with a “Dream” of peace between Arabs, our homeland’s surrounding neighbors, and Jews. To get there, we have to adamantly make our Jewish homeland including Jerusalem case, and Arabs must accept that and we Jews (Israelis’ largest stream being Mizrahi) “as being as indigenous to the Mideast as Arabs, and Judaism as Islam, indeed a millennium and a half longer. Perhaps the ABRAHAM Accords are a meaningful stride toward this recognition” (p. 211).
“Embedded in my Dream is the Temple Mount I focused on this week. Es-Sakhra, the Rock, the Foundation Stone, the summit of Mount Moriah, that’s enshrined in the Dome of the Rock, has deep religious significance to both Muslims and Jews. They view it as from where Muhammad ascended to heaven, and we as the base of our Temples’ Holy of Holies, on which Solomon carved the still visible place of the Ark of the Covenant. Maybe on mutually sharing access and reverence for this Rock in the context of Jewish Jerusalem we can build our peace.”
Emailed comment by James Kahn:
I completely disagree with Bob Slater’s comments about your issue #1315, AND with your reply to him, in which you quote the end of your own book, Here and Now.
Slater says that the Temple Mount has been holy to Muslims for centuries, and we cannot erase that history now. I say that that is exactly what the world needs to do, to heal this 14-century-old wound.
Why can’t that history be erased?
A holy mosque stood in Ayodya India for four centuries, and finally in 1992 the Hindus tore it down. The sole reason it stood there and was holy to Muslims was that it was the exact birthplace of the Sun God Rama 3,000 years ago and one of the holiest places in the Hindu religion.
That is precisely the M.O. of Islam for 14 centuries, to put their holy places right next to the holy places of other religions. Including the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. While Jesus was a carpenter, the “perfect man” Prophet Mohammed’s profession was a highway robber, looting caravans. This is in all of the Islamic texts. In his sacred final speech to his followers Mohammed said, “I have been called to fight ALL men until they SUBMIT and accept that Allah is the only one true God and that I am his messenger.”
It should be obvious that there is only ONE Abrahamic religion: Judaism. Christianity borrows Abraham politely, but does not attempt to co-opt him. If the Chinese or the North Koreans invented some myth and declared that Mecca was holy to them, would that be fair? Should Islam be forced to share Mecca with the Chinese? It might be appropriate, but only in the sense that if you see a bully knock some nerd’s teeth in, and you then go and knock the bully’s teeth in, that satisfies a crude sense of justice or revenge.
And in the Torah, of course, Noah is only partially a Jewish figure, because we stole the whole flood story from other traditions that preceded ours.
All religions were invented by human beings. Any polite and decent religion would not attempt to destroy the other ones. Hindus and Buddhists never, in the name of their God, behead babies in front of their parents and video themselves driving ten-inch nails into the vaginas of Jewish girls.
I will admit that many Muslims are very nice people and that someday, somehow, a new Islam can grow that somehow divorces itself from its thoroughly conquering and evil past. It’s not your fault if you were born to Muslim parents and raised in that faith. But the total square miles of the lands controlled by Islamic governments outnumber Jewish lands by 1,350 to one. The world will start to heal when Muslims and others stop tormenting all those they have bullied, and when the innocent Muslims who haven’t been guilty of this manage to curtail the guilty ones who have. And they must also stop slaughtering Christians in Nigeria, Syria, and elsewhere, and attacking, among others, Yazidis and Druze.
I am advocating rights for minorities, especially greatly outnumbered ones, such as Jews, Yazidis, and Druze, and issuing a plea that all of this persecution should stop, or be stopped.
My reply to Jim:
Thank you, Jim, for these thoughts, in which you “completely disagree” with those of Bob Slater and me. Disagreeing thoughts are the discourse of a “street.”
Sharing Holy Land religious sites with Muslims isn’t easy. I saw a cartoon years ago of the Temple Mount with arrows pointing to the Dome of the Rock and Western Wall below, with the caption “You built this on top of this and I’M the Occupier!?” And witness Jordanian bulldozers on the Temple Mount during their rule (resulting in the Sifting Project to reclaim what Jewish Temple-time remains could be salvaged), Arabs barbequing on Joshua’s Altar, damaging Joseph’s Tomb, etc. And the long long time Jews were excluded by Muslims from our Patriarchs’ Tombs beneath the still-standing building built not by them but by Herod.
The Dome of the Rock enshrines Mount Moriah’s summit, es-Sakhra, the Rock, the Foundation Stone, which has great religious significance to both Muslims and Jews, and in sharing reverence for this Rock in a Muslim-recognized Jewish Jerusalem we can maybe build peace.
How likely is this? I’m not naive. Here’s the very last paragraph of my book: “But is this Arab-Israeli cooperative Dream realistically achievable? Not the most unlikely thing in the world, only second. A retired elderly Jewish man is strolling the Miami Beach ocean shore at dusk one evening when a wave comes and washes up an old green bottle at his feet. Out pops the genie who tells him, ‘Look, times are tough, you get only one wish.’ The old man thinks and says ‘I wish there should be peace between the Arabs and Jews.’ The genie’s jaw drops. ‘It can’t be done,’ he shakes his head. ‘I’ve been at it for three thousand years. Wish for something else.’ The old man thinks and wishes his wife would engage in a certain non-kosher sexual act, to which the genie responds ‘Let me take another look at the map of the Middle East.'” Ok, it’s a long shot, but we have to try something, maybe sharing the Rock. Jerry
Emailed comment by Stu Bykofsky:
Long ago, I visited the Dome of the Rock. It is beautiful and should be cherished and protected. With the guide’s encouragement, I touched the “footprint” of where Muhammad ascended to heaven and then smelled my fingers. The scent was lilac, as I recall. (No doubt refreshed each morning by the keepers of the mosque.)
My reply: Yes, Stu, it is indeed beautiful and should be cherished by all and protected. Jerry
Emailed comment by Jeff Ludwig:
The poll you report on at the beginning of this communication is disturbing. However, the
public and its “opinion” tends to be fickle. Israel’s re-instatement as a nation state was not based
on public opinion but on Almighty God. Israel did not win five wars in which they were
vastly outnumbered because of public opinion, but because of Almighty God. Israel
is not the most scientifically creative country in the entire Middle East because of
public opinion but because of Almighty God. Because of my faith in Him, I am saddened by
dilution in support for Eretz Yisrael, but the Lord’s restoration of our Biblical homeland
is unshakeable. Another great issue. Thank you for your passionate love for Israel!!
My reply: Thank you, Jeff, for these comments and your super-strong faith. Best, Jerry