Hebrew Voices #173 – Spread the Love

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #173, Spread the Love, Nehemia speaks to the brother of Eden Naftali, a 23-year old girl murdered by Hamas terrorists at the desert music festival on October 7. Eden's brother Aviv shares about what happened to his sister, her love of dancing, and how she touched members of her community.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-173-Spread-the-Love2-NehemiasWall.mp3Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #173 – Spread the Lov

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: So, you just had an alert, a siren. Tell us what happened.

Aviv: At the beginning of the podcast, you can hear the alarm.

Aviv’s Parents: ...tasbir lo mah haya po (tell him what happened here).

Aviv: Sorry for that.

[Sounds of sirens and rocket impacts on Aviv’s end.]

Aviv: Can you hear that?

Nehemia: I heard something, I’m not really sure. Can you tell us what you’re hearing? Describe for the audience what you’re hearing and where you are.

Aviv: We were to start the conversation and then the alarm went on. And yeah, we heard sounds like bombs here, and we’ve got to stay ten minutes after the alarm went on because parts of the missile come down from the sky and it’s really dangerous. So, those are the rules. After the siren you have to stay in the shelter for another ten minutes. So, we’ll go back. Wait a second. There we go. So, a great start for the conversation!

Nehemia: Yeah. Aviv, tell us where you are in Israel.

Aviv: So, I live in Rishon Lezion. It’s one of the big cities here in Israel, right next to Tel Aviv, central Israel.

Nehemia: So, we were about to start the conversation, and you heard a siren, and then you closed the window. You didn’t close the regular window, you closed something like a blast window.

Aviv: Yeah, I’ll show you. Just a second. Sorry for the way I look, it’s because we’re after 30 days of grief, like mourning, according to Judaism, and we’re not allowed to get a haircut. So, I’ll show you. That’s regular, it has the sun guards, you can open it this way. And then, when the alarm goes on, you close it.

Nehemia: So, you’re not in a regular room. You’re in what we call a mamad, which is a bomb shelter room within the apartment that you live in. Is that right?

Aviv: Yes, it is.

Nehemia: Okay. And I saw two people there. Were those your parents?

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, alright. Wow, I’ve never had a podcast that began this way, but these are the circumstances.

Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices! This is Dr. Nehemia Gordon, and I am here with Aviv Naftali. He is the brother of Eden Naftali, who was murdered in the October 7th Hamas massacre. That is, I guess, a picture of her on your shirt.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: Let’s start with you telling us the basics of what happened to your sister. Let’s start with just the basics. Let’s assume people know nothing about it. People might be listening to this 10 or 20 years from now, and they'll be like… It’s like when I asked the young people about 9/11 and they have some vague idea of what happened. So please share with the audience what happened on October 7th. Where did it happen? How did it happen?

Aviv: Basically, October 7th is the 9/11 of the Israelis, and of the Jews in general, because they didn’t care if you’re an Israeli Druze or Jewish, they just murdered all of them. So, my sister, she was at the Nova Music Festival in the south of Israel, right next to Kibbutz Re’im.

During this time… I’m a combat soldier. I was in Judea and Samaria, and I was standing right next to the road that was saving the citizens of Judea and Samaria, the Binyamin region. And I saw that the sirens were going off in the south in Israel. It was something massive, not something standard. Because here in Israel we have gotten used to it that the sirens go on, that there are missiles and rockets. It’s not something rare, and we know these kinds of things happen, but not like this. It was a bunch of rockets, maybe thousands of rockets in 15 minutes.

The first thing I did was send a message to my sister, and she went to the bomb shelter. In the south of Israel there are a lot of bomb shelters, they’re called migunit, they’re small shelters on the side of the roads. And she sent a message to me, and she asked, “Are you good? There are rockets.” And I told her, “Yeah, I’m good. How about you?" And she told me, “I’m okay. I’m inside a migunit,” the bomb shelter. “We escaped from the area of the party.” They got outside their car and then they got inside the migunit, the bomb shelter. I'm talking about her and her boyfriend, Dan, who was also murdered with her inside the bomb shelter.

They stayed there for an hour because they thought it’s only rockets and missiles, which is funny to say, but it’s something regular. It happens all the time that rockets and missiles are launched above your head. It's sad to say, but that’s the reality. So they weren’t afraid that much. And then she sent a message to her friends. We it saw afterwards, that said, “I’m afraid.” That's the message. Because there are terrorists from the air who got inside of Israel. They crossed the border with a kind of, I don’t know how to say it in English, but they crossed via the air. You know what I’m talking about?

Nehemia: Yeah. Paragliders.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: Something like a paraglider. It’s a little glider that has an engine.

Aviv: Yeah. So, they stayed in the bomb shelter for an hour. They got in there at 7 a.m.

Nehemia: Let me back up. So, she’s at the party. There’s thousands of people who are at a multi-day party outside. She got in the car and drove somewhere to get to this migunit, this little roadside bomb shelter.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: Or is she still in the party vicinity?

Aviv: No. Immediately when the siren went on during the party, they got inside their car with all their stuff and they were driving south, I think, on road 232. There are a lot of bomb shelters along there, and they got inside one of them and they stayed there for an hour. Then the terrorists arrived, and they threw eight grenades in, according to what I know, and the last message from her was around 8:15 a.m. I think, yeah, at that point she didn’t answer me. Yeah.

Nehemia: Just to give a picture for the audience, this migunit that he’s talking about are like bus stops, or it’s next to a bus stop. And you can go in it and get shelter from rocket attacks. But there’s no door that locks it. There’s no way to secure it from the inside. It’s just an open shelter, meaning you can walk in, and it should give you some protection from a rocket. And what the terrorists were doing was throwing grenades in, and she was killed from one of these grenades.

Wow, that… We have this phrase in Hebrew, “ein li milim”, “I don’t have words”. I don’t know what to say, except for, may her memory be blessed.

Aviv: Thank you.

Nehemia: So, tell us about your sister. What was she doing at the party? I know some people there were working. Some people were just there enjoying themselves and having a good time. Some people were part of the entertainment. What was she doing there?

Aviv: She was dancing.

Nehemia: She was just dancing.

Aviv: She was just enjoying life. That’s the case.

Nehemia: Okay. Tell us about your sister. You wrote to me on Facebook. I guess I had said something about Israel, and you said, “Thank you for the support, and that you're doing this thing to commemorate your sister.” I want you to take this opportunity so people will know who she is. She’s not just a number, she's not just a name… I actually looked up your sister on this website which has all of the names of the people killed. And there were nine people named Eden who were killed, which blew my mind. Eden is the name of my little niece who’s ten years old.

Tell us about your sister. I want the world to know who she was and to remember her so she’s not just a name, she's not just a number.

Aviv: Let me be honest, I knew just a very tiny part of my sister because most of my time recently I’ve spent in the army, the IDF. So, you go home once a month, maybe less, once every two weeks. I think, actually, until the age of 16, most siblings just argue about stupid things. So, I got to know her much better after this age, where we got to know each other much better and spent a lot of time together.

My sister was enjoying life. She was enjoying life. She liked traveling. She was smiling all the time. She was spreading love. I don’t know if you can see it, but on the back of the shirt we made for her… I will show you.

Nehemia: Yeah, we can’t see it, so show us.

Aviv: It has the statement, “Spread the love,” and she was always spreading love. For example, when she got into an elevator, she would say hello to strange people. She was so happy.

In Judaism we have the shiva. After someone passes away a lot of people come into your house and share stories about her and feelings, and during these seven days, the shiva, this week, I found out a lot of neat things about my sister. It’s something that makes you understand that it’s really… sorry if I get emotional.

Nehemia: No, that’s to be expected, it’s fine.

How old was she when she was killed?

Aviv: 23.

Nehemia: 23. Can you share some of these stories that you heard about her during the seven-day mourning period, where people came to share about her life?

Aviv: Yeah. I didn’t know it, but she was a student in college in Rishon Lezion. For part of the semester you’ve got to do a volunteering project. You can choose and do whatever you want. And one of her friends at college told me during the shiva this week that she was volunteering at the “Flower” project, Perach in Hebrew, an organization for autistic children. She was spending a lot of time, twice a week, with a girl that I think is seven years old named Hadar here in our neighborhood. Hadar’s mom loved her, because at the moment she left Hadar's home, she was sending messages saying, “Please come back, just for a couple more moments.” This one was really exciting.

Nehemia: So, your sister, if I understand correctly, was helping with this seven-year-old autistic girl.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: What was she studying in college, your sister?

Aviv: Again?

Nehemia: What was she studying, your sister, in college?

Aviv: Oh, how do I say it in English? Not communications…

Nehemia: Say it in Hebrew.

Aviv: Tikshoret.

Nehemia: Okay, communications.

Aviv: Yeah, communications.

Nehemia: Okay. I did a Google search and I saw that she had something on Israel Bidur, or something like that? What is that about? Tell us about that.

Aviv: Israel Bidur is one of the biggest pages of Israeli entertainment on Instagram, and she was working on the questions for interviewing famous people.

Nehemia: Okay, so she was a producer on an entertainment, celebrity type program.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay, wow. So, tell us about the efforts that… you're doing with these different projects to commemorate her. You’ve got a t-shirt, and there’s a page on Instagram that I saw. Tell us about what you’re doing and what you hope to accomplish with that.

Aviv: Well, in my opinion, I say, “Peace can never bring my sister back.” But the way she made people feel, the deeds she did, that’s what we need to remember. That’s what I’m trying to say to people. When people ask me, "What was she for you? Who was she for her friends?" I just talk about the things she did and the videos of her dancing at parties. By the way, I'm asking all of you listening to the podcast to go to the account, RememberEdenNaftali, and you can see from the type of girl she was from the videos. Words can’t describe who she was.

Nehemia: We’ll put up a link on my website, NehemiasWall.com, where people can click over.

Aviv: As I said, I’m just a small part of her. And to be honest, we were at the beginning of our connection…

Nehemia: So that phrase that’s on the back of the t-shirt, “spread the love”, is that something she used to say? Or is that a message you’re trying to convey?

Aviv: That’s the statement written on her bio on Instagram, “Spread the love”.

Nehemia: It’s written on a video on Instagram?

Aviv: On the bio of her Instagram account.

Nehemia: Oh, on her account, “To spread the love”. Okay. That’s the little statement that you put up on… oh, on the bio, oh okay, I understand. That’s on her bio.

Aviv: On her bio, not on the account we made to commemorate her.

Nehemia: So, in her bio, the statement that she wanted to communicate to people was, “Spread the love”. Wow. This is just really tragic. And there are over 1,400 stories like this, many of which we’ll probably never hear. You mentioned that they came to kill people. I found out this week that 17 Bedouin were killed, were murdered.

Aviv: Yes. How many?

Nehemia: I read 17.

Aviv: No. A lot more.

Nehemia: More than that?

Aviv: A lot more, yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. Maybe that's from this one family or something.

Aviv: Yeah. A couple of minutes before we started the conversation, the podcast, I read that a missile that was fired from Gaza landed in the city of Rahat, a huge city in the south of Israel. It’s 100% Bedouin, and four children were killed from this missile, from the family of Abu el Karhan, I think. I will send you the article.

Nehemia: And for our audience to understand, Bedouins are Arab Muslims.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: And what you’re saying is that four Arab Muslim children were killed. And of course, there were protests all over the world that Hamas killed these four Arab Muslim kids. No, there weren’t, they don’t care. Let’s be honest, Hamas doesn’t care, and the protesters don’t care. The more civilians that are killed, from their perspective, on both sides I think, that’s what they want.

Aviv: You reminded me that yesterday I saw a crazy video of a terrorist who got inside this migunit, this bomb shelter. I speak Arabic, so I know what he said. But this video was translated to English, so you can also listen. It is a crazy video when a terrorist got inside. Actually, he was screaming from outside the bomb shelter, and he said, [Arabic], which means, “get out.” And the person inside the bomb shelter answered, “I’m Arabic, I’m a Muslim.” And then the terrorist said, “get out”, and in the end the terrorist went next to him and shot him. And they started to ask him, “Where is Re’im? Where is Re’im? Where is Kibbutz Re’im?” This video is mandatory to watch, to understand that the IDF has to remove Hamas from this world and eliminate each one of them. They are Nazis. They are truly Nazis.

Nehemia: That’s a great analogy, because when the United States and the Western powers fought the Nazis, primarily it was so that they don't conquer the world and harm America and Britain. But it was also for the good of the German people. And I think it’s very accurate to say that the innocent civilians in Gaza are suffering alongside the Jews. Meaning, if you believe their numbers, that over 10,000 were killed in Gaza, I’m sure they weren’t all civilians but let’s say a lot of them were civilians, they are victims of Hamas. Because that’s actually the strategy. Hamas wants them to be killed, that’s why they’re stopping them from moving out of the battle zone. It’s why they set off bombs on people who are moving down Salah al-Din Street to escape from the war zone.

We’re dealing here with really evil people who murdered your sister to end an occupation that ended in 2005! Israel pulled out in 2005.

Aviv: Correct.

Nehemia: I actually read somebody who said this, I couldn’t believe it. They said, “The prisoners broke out of the prison camp of Gaza.” The prison camp of Gaza? There were beach resorts in Gaza, it’s a small country. It has a lower population density than Singapore. I was in Singapore about ten years ago, and it’s a paradise. The Gazans could have had a paradise in Gaza if they chose that, but they didn't. They chose to build terror tunnels and they chose to invest in terror infrastructure rather than in making the lives of the people better.

Aviv: Correct, 100%. And in 2005, 18 years ago… it’s really important to say that Hamas were elected democratically by the Palestinian people in Gaza.

Nehemia: Aviv, most people don’t know this, but Hitler was actually elected democratically in a democratic election.

Aviv: Yeah. But we’ve got to say Hamas was taking over the Gaza Strip, and then they invested all the money they got from these “donations” that we see on bios of people on Instagram, they invested it on tunnels, on missiles and weapons instead of humanitarian things for these poor civilians in Gaza.

Nehemia: Just yesterday I saw the video where the Israeli soldiers brought fuel to Shifa Hospital, and Hamas would not let the people in the hospital go get the fuel because it came from Israel. And Hamas claims that four premature babies died because there wasn’t electricity. We have this ancient Hebrew expression, “the blood is on their head”. The blood of those four babies is on the head of Hamas. They caused those deaths.

We’re dealing with a really evil organization. And I said this on day one when I started to see the videos, I said that in some ways they're worse than the Nazis. And what I mean by that is that the Nazis had these death squads called Einsatzgruppen that followed the army, the Wehrmacht, and they gathered up Jews and murdered them. But they had a law that it was illegal to record it, it was illegal to photograph it, it was illegal to video it. And we have a handful of videos that were taken illegally. There’s one from Estonia I believe.

Hamas went in with GoPros. They wanted the world to see the atrocities that they were committing. They were proud of it. Everyone has probably seen the video, and if you haven’t, go find it, of a man who calls up his mother and father and says, “Your son has killed ten Jews with his own hands!” And they say, “This is wonderful, Allahu Akbar!” They’re praising god that their son was able to kill ten Jews with his own hands.

Aviv: You know, sometimes I ask myself, is the world blind? Can’t you see that it’s good versus evil? Yeah, I am sad for innocent civilians being killed in Gaza, but the difference between me and the people I am having these conversations with and discussing with them about this conflict is that they do not understand the reason and the cause that these innocent civilians are getting killed. It’s all about Hamas, that’s the main reason that the IDF, doesn't have to, but must eliminate them, remove them. They are terrorists. I’m going to say it again.

Nehemia: To quote Hillary Clinton, who I never thought I’d quote in my life, she said, “There was a ceasefire on October 6th.”

Aviv: Right.

Nehemia: So, to have another ceasefire without eliminating Hamas will cost more lives of Palestinian civilians in the long run, and of course, Jewish lives as well. They promised, they said, “We’re going to do this again, and again, and again.” They came out and said, “that is our intention.” So, these calls for a ceasefire are kind of delusional. It would be like, if in the height of World War II somebody said, “We’ve got to stop bombing Dresden. We’ve got to have a ceasefire because innocent Germans are being killed.” Well yeah, they are being killed, and that was Hitler’s plan. Hitler’s plan was, if he couldn’t have his glorious Thousand-Year Reich, then the German people needed to be destroyed. That was actually what he believed.

And Hamas wants dead civilians to stop Israel’s normalization with Saudi Arabia and to destroy Israel. They've said it, they’re not hiding it here. They’re pretty open about what they’re trying to do.

Aviv: Yeah, 100%. They launch rockets from civilian areas such as mosques, schools, kindergartens. There are a lot of videos of this. It’s sad to say, but we always have to prove to the world that there is evidence, and we've got to show we are not lying. Write on Instagram "IDF", or "Standwithus", I promise you, you will see a lot of evidence, and the IDF exposes all these places. You actually see, it’s crazy, a kindergarten or a mosque, and then you go a couple of meters, and you see a rocket launcher. It’s crazy.

I want to also say Israel has no interest in killing civilians, innocent civilians, people in Gaza.

What’s the point of it? Why would we?

Nehemia: And here, I think it’s really important… there’s this phrase in English, “moral equivalence”. And they’ll say, “Well, 1,400 were killed in Israel but 10,000 were killed in Gaza.” The difference is, Israel does not target civilians. Civilians die in war and it’s a horrible, tragic thing, and it’s why Israel didn’t start this war and would never have started this war. The people who started this war and are using the civilians as human shields are the ones responsible for those deaths.

Aviv: Right.

Nehemia: Your sister was killed when there was a ceasefire.

Aviv: Right.

Nehemia: The ceasefire ended with Hamas carrying out this genocidal attack targeting civilians.

Aviv: 100%.

Nehemia: And I heard somebody compare it to 9/11. I think it was Michael Oren, who is also a wonderful historian. And he said, “Imagine if on 9/11 parts of the United States were conquered by Al Qaeda and held for 24, 48, 72 hours, and they went door to door killing people.” So, this is actually much worse from an Israeli perspective than 9/11 in the sense that… also the proportion of the Israeli population that was killed, 1,400 plus people, and they’re still counting body parts, so we don’t know the exact number.

Aviv: Can I ask you Dr. Gordon?

Nehemia: Yeah.

Aviv: I don’t know the facts, but when the 9/11 disaster happened to the US, did someone in the world ask for a US ceasefire against Al Qaeda?

Nehemia: Maybe the usual suspects, like North Korea. But no respectable country said to the United States, “Don’t go and root out the people who caused this.” A lot of people in America will say, “The war in Afghanistan went on for too long. It was horrible.” But for 20 years there were no attacks on the United States. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration, and I say this with a heavy heart, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to expect that what happened on October 7th is going to happen in either Europe or the United States in the coming years. I pray and hope that it doesn’t, but there are evil people around the world who saw what happened and they’re thinking, “Oh, we could do this. We could do this in Berlin, we could do this in Paris.”

And look, they did a very similar thing, not on the same scale, but there was a similar thing that happened in Mumbai. There was a similar thing that happened in Kenya where you had what are referred to as “soft targets.” They came and attacked civilians. And I would be pleasantly surprised if this doesn’t happen in Europe or the United States.

My sister is a professor at a university in the US and she’s been wearing this t-shirt, “I stand with Israel”. Now, my sister was very active in the MeToo movement, and no one ever came to her and said, “Take off that MeToo shirt. It’s making people feel uncomfortable.” But they had the gall to come to my sister and say, “Take off that ‘I support Israel’ shirt. It’s making people feel uncomfortable.” And her takeaway from this… my takeaway, I’ll speak for myself, is, it’s horrible to rape women unless they’re Jewish women, then it’s okay. It’s horrible to murder civilians unless they’re Jewish civilians, then it’s okay. That seems to be the message the world is sending.

You’re right, nobody went to the US and said, “Don’t defend yourself. Don’t find out who did this and make sure they don’t do it again.” We didn’t have a single attack, a major attack, for over 20 years when the US was in Afghanistan. I hope that remains the case, but I’m not an optimist. I’m a pessimist.

Aviv: Yeah, I saw a post written that the IDF uses its weapons to defend its civilians, while Hamas uses its civilians to defend its weapons, and that basically explains the situation remarkably well.

Nehemia: You know, I see the picture of your sister, and I see the photos on the RememberEdenNaftali page, and I didn’t know her, but it seems to me your sister was all about life, that she celebrated life. And the motto of Hamas is, they say that they love death more than the Jews love life. I don’t know if that’s true, if they love it more, because your sister really loved life, I can see that. And our heritage, in the Torah it says, “ve’chai b’hem”, you have these commandments from God and “you will live by them”. Judaism is all about life. It’s not about death, it’s not about killing people. So, I look at your sister as the symbol of what the Jewish people are all about, celebrating life.

This was an attack on the Jewish people, but it was also an attack on the people of Israel, which includes non-Jews. It includes Muslims who were killed, and Druze who were killed, and Thai workers who were murdered. For what? They were just there to engage in agriculture. Why would you kill those people? And they were specifically targeted and killed, and it’s because they celebrate death.

Aviv: Yeah. I’m not surprised. These are terrorists. They are terrorists! That’s all they want, to eliminate the Jews and to remove the Jews. And when you hear some stupid people screaming and shouting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” What does that mean? Stop for a second, think about this statement.

Nehemia: Let me ask you a question, Aviv. Where do you live? Do you live between the river and the sea?

Aviv: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: So, when they’re saying, “from the river to the sea”, what do they mean?

Aviv: So, from the Jordan River, which is the eastern border of Israel, to the Mediterranean Sea, which is the western border of Israel, Palestine will be free. Which means, “We want to move Israel from the whole area and to establish a Palestinian state instead of Israel. There is no place for a Jewish state.”

Nehemia: So, when they say, “from the river to the sea”, they mean to kill you. You live in Rishon Lezion. They mean kill your mother, kill your father, and kill babies in Rishon Lezion because that’s between the river and the sea. And they obviously meant to kill your sister, because they did. So, I think we should believe them when they say from the river to the sea is what they want, and anybody who says that is calling for the genocide of Jews.

Aviv: Yes. I mean, I don’t blame those students in college screaming this, because there are a lot of pro-Palestinians that made this statement very popular, and human rights and stuff. That’s not the case. I’m asking you, have you researched and learned about the conflict? Know the facts before you express your opinion.

Nehemia: And these are the same people who were quiet when 400,000 Yemenis were killed, and when 600,000 Syrians, including lots of Palestinians, were killed. Israel had nothing to do with it, so they didn’t say a word. But now, all of a sudden, they’ve discovered there are conflicts in the Middle East. And there’s a bad guy and a good guy, and Israel, in their distorted world view, is the bad guy, even though we didn’t start this war. We didn’t want this war, and we didn’t expect this war.

Aviv: Yeah, it’s much more complicated than you think. There are a lot of Palestinians who worked in Israel. They crossed the border every day. They went inside the territory of Israel, they worked, and at night they go back to Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank.

Let's take another example. Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip did the same thing every day. People do not know that. Those screaming that Israel is an apartheid state, let me tell you something, 25% of the population in Israel are Arabs, Arab Israelis. Some of them are members in the Knesset, which is the parliament in Israel, some of them are Supreme Court judges. And all of them have the right to vote when there are elections. Do your research. What the hell are you talking about?

What about genocide? Genocide is what the Nazis did to the Jews in World War II. Killing six million Jews, that’s genocide.

Nehemia: And I would say that what happened on October 7th was a mini genocide because they killed Thais, and they killed Muslims, but their main target was Jews. Going door to door and killing entire families, that is a small-scale genocide. That’s how I see it. Because they were specifically targeting Jewish civilians. The people that they burned to death, and your sister, it was for no reason other than that she was Jewish. That’s genocide in my view.

Now, people die in war, like we said, 400,000, you can look up the numbers, were killed in Yemen. The number estimate is 600,000 in Syria, and not a single protest. I certainly didn’t see any on college campuses. You mentioned the students, and I guess one way to look at them, the ones who are chanting these pro-Hamas things, some of them might be useful idiots. That's what they’re referred to as, Hamas is using them as useful idiots. The most bizarre thing is the Queers for Palestine. Let’s be honest. If those people went to Gaza, they’d be killed! You’re laughing because you know they would be killed!

Aviv: Yeah!

Nehemia: It’s kind of like the Jewish Voice for Peace, which is one of these groups where it’s Jews who are pro-Hamas, even after what Hamas did on October 7th. They’re really like the Queers for Palestine. I half-jokingly say I’ll buy each one of those guys a ticket to go to Gaza and let’s see what happens to you!

Aviv: When we offer Bella Hadid and Mrs. Greta to go to Gaza, the way they usually dress, and let’s see what happens, yeah.

Nehemia: Greta Thunberg is an interesting example because she is in favor of Palestine. She is in favor, evidently, of Hamas. And the reason I say that is, she suddenly came out in favor of Palestine right after October 7th, so it’s quite clear she’s supporting what Hamas did.

You know, Israel had to shut down the natural gas plant that’s off the coast of Ashkelon because they’re afraid it will get hit by rockets while it’s pumping out gas. So, what Israel’s doing instead, for lack of any choice, is burning coal. So, she’s in favor of Hamas, that forces a country of nine million people to burn coal. What kind of environmental hypocrisy is that?

Aviv: Yeah. I also suggest to Greta to check the facts. Babies were beheaded, women were raped. She said nothing about that.

Nehemia: Right. And it’s hard to say that she’s a useful idiot, although she still seems to be kind of an idiot. Because she should know better. She has a public platform. And it’s one thing if you’re some second-year student at Harvard, although I don’t excuse that either. I mean, come on! These are people at Harvard, they’re supposed to be the most educated people in the world, and they don’t know better? There’s really no excuse for that. There was a guy going around asking people to sign a petition supporting Hamas. Did you see this?

Aviv: Yeah, I saw it.

Nehemia: And he said to them, “Just before you sign, you need to know, here are some platforms of Hamas.” They're like, “Well, I don’t support that!” “Oh, but you said you support Hamas.”

Aviv: Yeah. It just shows that people aren’t educated, and you know what? I do not blame them.

Nehemia: I'm sorry, a student at Harvard is supposed to know better. They're not…

Aviv: It’s crazy because they will be our leaders of tomorrow, these are the leaders of the future. They are the future.

Nehemia: Well, I know this is not a comfort, but when this happens in Europe or the United States, you’ll see those people suddenly… maybe not. Maybe those people will support when this happens in the US and Christians are targeted or Jews are targeted. Maybe they’ll change their tune, I don’t know. I hope that never happens, but in the real world it almost certainly will.

This sort of thing has emboldened terrorists around the world, and if Israel doesn’t do what I think you and I agree needs to be done to Hamas, and hopefully the government of Israel agrees it needs to be done, then this will happen again around the world, and certainly in Israel.

Aviv: So-called “The West.”

Nehemia: Yeah. Can you share some final thoughts about your sister? I want the world to know who she was. Share some final thoughts, maybe a prayer or something. I don’t know if you’re a praying man, but if not, just some wishes and thoughts.

Aviv: I want to sum up this conversation with the same thing I summed up my… like my speech. I don’t know how to say it in English, hesped.

Nehemia: Eulogy.

Aviv: Yeah.

Nehemia: The eulogy over your sister.

Aviv: So, with this statement, Am Yisrael Chai, which means that the people of Israel are alive, the Jewish people are alive, and they’re not going anywhere. Okay? To those anti-Semitic people who scream “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Am Yisrael Chai. The Nazis tried to remove us from the world; they didn’t manage to. Hamas will never do it. We've got a beautiful country, a beautiful state, the people of Israel are alive, Am Yisrael Chai.

Nehemia: Amen. Is there somewhere people can get those t-shirts if they want to commemorate your sister?

Aviv: Actually not, but I will try to make more.

Nehemia: Okay. Thank you, Aviv, I really appreciate it.

Aviv: Thank you, Doctor, I really appreciate you having me here. And keep up your support, speaking out for Israel. Thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart.

Nehemia: Thank you, bye, shalom.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 Tactical difficulties
04:02 Intro
11:04 Who was Eden Naftali?
20:07 We’re dealing with Nazis
31:40 Compared to 9/11
34:55 Choose life
36:54 “From the river to the sea”?
46:05 Final thoughts

VERSES MENTIONED
Leviticus 18:5

RELATED EPISODES
Israel War Episodes
Hebrew Voices #56 – The Battle for the Six-Day War
Hebrew Voices #59 – Michael Oren on Trump’s Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

OTHER LINKS
Eden’s Instagram
Times of Israel Article

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