I hate when these sermons start like a news report, but this week as has been the case too often in recent years, the news is relevant to the message. This week the President of the United States signed a memorandum of understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran. He signed it inside the Palace of Versailles, at a dinner, beside the President of France. The agreement reopens the Strait of Hormuz, lifts the American naval blockade, promises Iran some three hundred billion dollars in reconstruction, and pledges to end the fighting on every front, Lebanon included. It says nothing about Iran’s ballistic missiles. It says nothing about the militias Iran arms from Beirut to the Red Sea. Iran’s own government boasted that it got everything it wanted. And in Israel, a poll released this week found that only eleven percent of Israelis believe their country won this war.

Now I am going to say something that may surprise you, though I don’t think it should. Almost all of the criticism of Israel’s government this week is fair. I have my own quarrel with this government. So, it turns out, do most Israelis, who told that same poll that the prime minister’s conduct damaged their country’s standing with the one superpower it cannot do without. A war was fought. Its aims were not won. A people that loves Israel is allowed to say that out loud. The Torah does not merely permit it. The Torah commands it. Hocheach tochiach et amitecha. You shall surely rebuke your kinsman, the Book of Leviticus says, the one you are bound to. Rebuke is what you owe the people you........

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