Two female soldiers were surrounded by a mob of young Jewish men on the streets of Bnei Brak on Sunday. Police had to rescue them. A police car was flipped over. Officers were injured. Trash bins were hurled at patrol vehicles as the mob gave chase.
This wasn’t Gaza. This wasn’t Jenin. This was Bnei Brak, a city in the heart of Israel – and the attackers were Jews.
I cannot adequately express how heartbroken I am by what I witnessed in those videos.
Two and a half years since October 7, after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, after watching our people face rising antisemitism across the globe, we now have Jews violently attacking other Jews on Israeli streets.
Where are the parents?
I ask this question with genuine anguish. Where are the mothers and fathers who should be sitting their children down and explaining that this behavior represents everything Judaism stands against?
Every Friday night, we sing Shalom Aleichem (peace to you all) and conclude our daily prayers with Oseh Shalom (the One who makes peace). We pray for peace constantly. Peace isn’t just about protecting ourselves from external enemies; it mainly starts in the home, among our own family. Peace is about how we treat others, both our fellow Jews and the rest of the world.
Violence between Jews has never been a Jewish value. In the past, it has led to the most devastating of consequences. Raising our voices within the system, working toward compromise, relating to our fellow Jews with wisdom, love, and empathy: these are Jewish values.
Democracy means debate. Living in a Jewish state means wrestling with difficult questions. But rushing to violent protests, attacking fellow Jews, and destroying property – these actions have no justification in our texts.
Show me anywhere in the Talmud, in any halachic source, where attacking fellow Jews is permitted. Where flipping police cars or chasing down fellow Jews soldiers who are serving to protect the Jewish state is acceptable behavior. You won’t find it.
If you truly believe the Almighty runs this world, if you believe He is our partner and loves us tremendously, then you must also believe that He does not want us attacking fellow Jews. The only precedent we have for Jew-on-Jew violence is as a warning, a tragedy to be mourned and prevented.
We fast because the Second Temple was destroyed due to baseless hatred between Jews. We fast on the anniversary of Gedaliah’s assassination because a Jew killed another Jew.
I remember being at an NCSY Shabbaton when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed and learning that the assassin was Jewish. I cannot begin to describe how my heart, and every Jewish heart, was shattered by that news.
This legacy of violence contradicts everything we stand for. The IDF is called the Israel Defense Forces for a reason.
We do not seek out conflict. We do not glorify violence. We use force only when absolutely necessary for our survival.
I’ve carried with me for years a phrase on a keychain from the Menachem Begin Museum: “Civil war never.” It refers to the Altalena incident, one of the rare moments of Jew-on-Jew violence in our history. When the Irgun attempted to bring in arms, and the Haganah fired on the ship, killing several people, Irgun leader and future prime minister Menachem Begin ran around the boat shouting, “Don’t fire back! Don’t fire back! Jews don’t fire on each other!”
That principle has been our guiding light.
This violence must stop immediately.
Every religious leader, political leader, and community figure within the Jewish people must stand up with one united voice and say:
No to violence.
No to protests that end in violence.
No to demonstrations that inevitably turn into desecrations of God’s name.
No to reporters being chased in the streets.
No to female soldiers being surrounded and threatened.
Reject violence against authority figures
The orthodox community, in particular, must speak with absolute clarity: we totally reject violence against authority figures and violence against each other. There can be no ambiguity, no equivocation.
To the parents and rabbinic leaders of these young men: you must sit your sons and students down and tell them clearly that this behavior does not represent what Jewish history teaches us. This is not what God wants from His people.
We have a sacred responsibility to teach our children that the path of Torah is a path of peace and life, not violence.
I understand there are legitimate debates about military service, about integration, about the future of Israeli society. These are real issues that deserve serious discussion. But the moment protest becomes violence, the moment debate turns into mob rule, we have abandoned everything Judaism teaches us about how to engage with difficult questions.
Our nation has survived millennia of external threats. We have faced persecution, exile, and attempts at annihilation. We’ve survived because we remained united in our core values, because we refused to turn on each other even in the darkest moments.
We cannot allow an extremist minority to tear apart what external enemies have failed to destroy. We are better than this. Judaism demands better than this. Our children deserve better than this.
The women and men serving in uniform, protecting all of us regardless of our level of observance or our position on contentious issues, deserve our respect and protection, not our violence.
Civil war never. Not then, not now – not ever.
The writer is the International CEO of Aish, a global Jewish educational movement. He formerly served as eastern director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he oversaw the Museum of Tolerance in New York City.