With Friends Like These: The International Edition

Twelve Western nations — Britain, France, Canada, and nine others — announced this week that they will ban goods and sanction commerce from Jewish communities in Yehudah and Shomron, while Britain's Jewish Foreign Secretary accused Jews of "ethnic cleansing" in the very breath in which he declared himself proud of his Jewishness and a friend of Israel. The State of Israel is shocked, wounded, betrayed by its friends. We are not shocked. We have spent this entire year documenting exactly this playbook — the loving disclaimer, followed by the ban; the friendship, followed by the sanction; the libel, certified as fact. We watched it perfected at home, against the Olam HaTorah. And we warned, in these very pages, that a state which wages war on its own shield should not be surprised when the world's hand is loosed against it.

I. What Happened

The facts first, as reported across the world press. The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden issued a joint statement announcing national bans and restrictions on trade with Israeli communities beyond the Green Line, citing settlement expansion and what they called unprecedented levels of settler violence. They singled out the E1 building project, demanded an immediate halt to all settlement construction, and declared their firm opposition to any annexation or displacement.

Britain went furthest. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced an import ban on settlement goods, a comprehensive sanctions regime against anyone providing construction, financing, or real-estate services to the communities — threatening violators with the full force of British sanctions — new restrictions on arms exports, and a formal shift in Britain's position to regard the entire Israeli presence beyond the Green Line as unlawful. And he supplied the rhetoric to match: "settler terrorism," he declared, is rampant, and Britain has concluded that "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians is being perpetrated by Jews in Yehudah and Shomron, with the Israeli government turning a blind eye.

Let us say plainly what that charge is, because we have just finished writing about manufactured accusations: it is a libel. A monstrous one — the vocabulary of Europe's own crimes, draped over Jewish families in hilltop towns by the governments of a continent soaked to its elbows in Jewish blood, governments that have assembled no such twelve-flag sanctions packages for any of the actual expulsions and slaughters proceeding elsewhere on earth this very morning. The American ambassador to Israel needed only one phrase for it: Jew hate. We stand, without one moment's hesitation, with the Jews being libeled — and note well that most of them are our ideological opponents, the Religious Zionist communities with whom we have argued in these pages all year. It does not matter. When the nations raise a blood-vocabulary against Jews, every Jew is our brother, full stop. That is what standing with someone actually looks like — hold that thought, because it is the subject of this article.

II. The Proud Jew's Disclaimer

Because here is what seized our attention in Miliband's announcement, and it was not the sanctions. It was the packaging. The Foreign Secretary took care to declare that he is proud of his Jewishness and unwavering in his support for the State of Israel. He defended Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. He condemned antisemitism. He rejected BDS — while announcing a boycott. He insisted the sanctions target only the settlements, not Israel — while declaring the Jewish presence unlawful in its entirety. He even announced sanctions on Hezbollah's financiers and measures against Iran in the same breath, the credentials presented alongside the blow.

Where have we heard this music before? We have heard it all year, in a minor key, at home. It is the voice of every "friend of the Charedim" this series has answered: the letter-writer who treasures Torah study — and asks the Prime Minister to aim the state at the Gedolim. The MK who apologizes for shouting — and repeats the demand. The commentators who oppose the arrests — while insisting on the policy that requires them. The formula is identical down to its grammar: I love you; I am one of you; I reject those who hate you — and now here is the ban, the sanction, the accusation. We gave that genre its name months ago: With Friends Like These. Ed Miliband is its international edition — a Jew wielding against the Jewish state precisely the instrument-set its own establishment taught the world to wield, disclaimer first, and certain of his own affection while he does it. Real friends, we said then and say now, do not need to recite their credentials before the blow. The credentials are the tell.

III. The Mirror

And now hold the two campaigns side by side — the one the world announced this week against the State, and the one the State has waged all year against the Olam HaTorah — because the symmetry is not rhetorical. It is architectural. Import bans on the goods of a community the campaign has demonized: the nations this week; the state against the yeshivos' funding all year. Sanctions on "anyone who finances or assists" the targeted community: Britain's new regime; the Section 46 revocations stripping tax status from those who finance Torah. A solemn legal declaration that the community's very presence is unlawful: Miliband's new doctrine; the Court's rulings on the beis medrash. The wholesale branding of a population by its worst epithet — "settler terrorists" there; "deserters," "parasites," "draft-dodgers" here. A libel dressed in official clothing and certified as established fact — "ethnic cleansing," announced with a UN definition attached; "1,700 shekels a month," announced with a fact-checker's stamp attached. Even the diction rhymes: the full force of British sanctions; the full enforcement of the Attorney General.

The State of Israel is not wrong to feel that this machinery is illegitimate, hypocritical, and cruel. It is all three. Our question is narrower: with what face does it complain? It built this machine, piece by piece, in its own workshop, and tested every component on the Torah community — the bans, the branding, the financial siege, the legal declarations, the certified libels. This week it discovered that the patent has expired. He who teaches the nations how a community is delegitimized should not marvel when the lesson is applied to him.

IV. We Called It — Because Chazal Called It

Now to the heart, and we will say it with the humility the subject demands. We are not nevi'im, and we do not presume to read the ledger of Shamayim. But we do not need nevuah for this — we need only the Gemara, and a calendar.

Chazal taught that the Torah is not a sector's hobby but the nation's actual defense: Torah magna u'matzla — the Torah protects and rescues (Sotah 21a). They taught that talmidei chachamim require no wall and fund no wall, rabbanan lo tzrichi netiruta — because they are the wall (Bava Basra 7b–8a). David HaMelech taught that im Hashem lo yishmor ir, shav shakad shomer — unless Hashem guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain (Tehillim 127:1). And Chazal taught the principle of the mirror itself: b'middah she'adam moded, bah modedin lo — by the measure a man metes out, so is it meted to him (Sotah 8b).

Now the calendar. In the very season in which the State handcuffed lomdei Torah at recruitment offices, held bochurim in Prison 10, denied a Jew his tefillin behind its gates, dissolved its promises to its own Charedi soldiers, stripped the yeshivos' funding and their tax status, demanded registries of who sits in the beis medrash, and had its Court refuse a single minute to the truth — in that season, twelve flags lined up against it, its oldest allies reached for bans and sanctions, and a libel was certified against it on the world's stage. We wrote it before it happened, in "How Torah Learning Protects Klal Yisrael" and again and again since: a state sawing at its own shield should expect the weather to reach it. The Sanzer Rebbe said it standing outside the prison itself — two years of open nissim, and who but a fool could say it is not solely the zechus of Torah and mitzvos that protects us? A government that wages war on that zechus while its diplomatic walls crack is not suffering a coincidence. It is running an experiment on Tehillim 127, and the results are arriving on schedule. By the measure it metes to the tents of Torah — bans, sanctions, delegitimization — so, this week, was it measured.

V. Whose Side We Are On — Say It Clearly

And precisely here we must be perfectly clear, because our enemies will twist this and our readers deserve it straight. We take no pleasure in any of this — none. These sanctions endanger Jews; the libel endangers Jews; the isolation of the State endangers the millions of our brothers and sisters who live within it, ourselves among them. We do not cheer Europe's hypocrisy, we do not validate a syllable of the ethnic-cleansing slander, and we daven for the safety of every Jew in this land — the soldier, the settler, the secular Tel Avivi, and the avreich in his cell. The lesson of the mirror is not "Israel deserves it," chalilah — Jewish suffering is never our satisfaction, and the nations raising their hand against Jews will answer for it as every empire before them has. The lesson is about where protection actually comes from, and what a state forfeits when it attacks the source. We are not the State's enemies as it stumbles into the storm. We are the ones pointing, with tears, at the shield it is throwing away.

VI. The Remedy Costs Nothing and Is Sitting in the Beis Medrash

So here is our word to the government now drafting its wounded responses to London and Paris. You cannot control the nations; their hypocrisy is ancient and their measures may be beyond your reach. But the shield is entirely within your reach, and it is being dismantled by your own hand. Release the bochurim! Restore the funding. Tear up the registries. Call off the Attorney General. Let the Olam HaTorah do, undisturbed, the thing it has done for three thousand years — stand as the netiruta, the true wall, of the Jewish people. It will cost you nothing: no brigade, no budget, no concession to any foreign minister. And then watch — as a matter of emunah we say it plainly — watch what happens to the walls outside when you stop breaking the wall within. Im Hashem yishmor ir — when Hashem guards the city, no twelve flags on earth can breach it.

Until then, we will go on doing our part of the arrangement regardless — learning, davening, and standing guard at the post the Ribbono Shel Olam assigned us, for the sake of every Jew in this land, including the ones sending the military police. That is what it means to be an actual friend. No disclaimer required.

May Hashem shelter all of Klal Yisrael from the schemes of the nations, expose every libel raised against Jews anywhere, turn the heart of the government to the true source of its protection, and spread over the whole land the sukkah of His peace that no sanction can touch — bimheirah b'yameinu, amen.

Sources

The measures

• The joint announcement of the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden — national bans and restrictions on trade with Israeli communities beyond the Green Line, the demand to halt settlement expansion and the condemnation of the E1 project — and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's package: the import ban, the sanctions regime against those providing construction, financing, or real-estate services, the arms-export restrictions, the declaration regarding the unlawfulness of the Israeli presence, and the "ethnic cleansing" and "settler terrorism" accusations, delivered alongside his professions of pride in his Jewishness, support for Israel, rejection of BDS, and measures against Hezbollah's financiers and Iran — as reported by Ynet and international media; US Ambassador Mike Huckabee's response

The Torah's account of protection

• Sotah 21a — Torah magna u'matzla; Bava Basra 7b–8a — rabbanan lo tzrichi netiruta, the scholars as the city's true wall; Tehillim 127:1 — im Hashem lo yishmor ir; Sotah 8b — b'middah she'adam moded, bah modedin lo; the words of the Sanzer Rebbe at Prison 10 on the nissim of these two years and the zechus that stands behind them

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

• "With Friends Like These" and "The Central Question, Answered" — the domestic genre this week went international
• "How Torah Learning Protects Klal Yisrael" — the warning, published before the news
• "Fact Check: Lapid's '1,700 Shekels a Month' Is a 2,400% Lie" — how libels get certified, at home and abroad
• "We Were Just Following Orders" and "One Law for the Yeshiva, Another for Everyone Else" — the machinery, tested on the Torah community first
• "How We Win" — the post we will not abandon, for the sake of the very state that fights us