I used to live on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. I loved how close it was to Prospect Park. The main entrance was just around the corner at Grand Army Plaza. That’s where I started my morning runs and frequented the farmers’ market. I was shocked when it became a venue — an anti-Israel political tool — on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

Yizkor, the service to remember those we’ve lost, was repurposed as a Gaza vigil. By any account, this was just another anti-Israel rally, this time bearing the trappings of an integral Yom Kippur ceremony.

The “service” was organized by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), Rabbis for Ceasefire, IfNotNow, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Speakers addressed the crowd from a podium adorned with a sign — “for the sin of genocide we atone.” Behind them stood a mock-up of a synagogue ark reading “Refuse, Remember, Recommit.”

Yizkor asks us to remember our own dead, not to grieve strangers as a political statement. That’s why using this service to indict a foreign government is so disturbing. It has nothing to do with the holiday itself.

The headliner for the event was Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil, if you’ve forgotten, is the anti-Israel college activist actively contesting deportation over his role in Columbia’s campus protests.

Khalil went through a harrowing........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)