$25,000 Later, AJC Teaches the World That Jews Owe for Collateral Damage

An act of goodwill turned moral self-sabotage

In the grand, tragic theatre of the Middle East, we are presented with a spectacle of such refined absurdity that it commands a perverse admiration. The American Jewish Committee (AJC), an organization for the advocacy of the Jewish people and Israel, has donated $25,000 to repair a Catholic church in Gaza, unintentionally damaged during an Israeli military operation.

One must marvel at the logic, or the spectacular lack thereof. Here is a supposedly premier Jewish advocacy group, in effect, paying reparations for an accidental consequence of a defensive war. The act is presented under the cloying banners of "interfaith dialogue" and "humanitarianism." But let us strip away these saccharine veils. Is the AJC, and by extension the global Jewish community, now financially liable for every stray piece of shrapnel produced in Israel's struggle for survival?

This is not merely charity; it is a capitulation to a poisonous narrative. The donation validates the grotesque idea that Israel bears a unique guilt that must be perpetually atoned for, even when its actions are unintentional and in self-defense. It is a financial kowtow to a world eager to condemn the Jewish state for the crime of existing.

Are we to expect that every time the IDF makes a tragic error in the fog of a war started by fanatics, Jewish organizations must open their checkbooks? This sets a precedent of breathtaking foolishness. It suggests the moral burden falls not on those who embed their rocket launchers next to parishes, but on those forced to target them. Rather than funding the reconstruction of collateral damage, one might ask the AJC to redirect its resources and its moral clarity toward the pressing causes of its own constituents. With Jewish communities facing rising threats globally and the state of Israel under perpetual siege, surely the primary concern of a Jewish committee ought to be the welfare and defense of the Jewish people.