Calling the 12 months since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 “a year of darkness that has enveloped the Jewish people,” Rabbi David Kaplan said “rays of light” have been visible in the darkness — and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman has been one of those rays of light.
Fetterman, wearing his typical cargo shorts and a blue hoodie decorated with the message “United We Stand” above pictures of the flags of the United States and Israel, attended a ceremony Monday evening at the Jewish Community Center of Wyoming Valley in Kingston to accept a “Champion of Israel” award that the local Jewish Community Alliance had commissioned an artist to create for him.
“I never felt I should ever be thanked,” Fetterman told the crowd of local admirers. “I’m just doing my job … protecting our special ally, Israel. It should be a bipartisan issue.”
While it’s difficult to find the words to express gratitude to Fetterman for standing up for Israel, Kaplan said, it’s not so hard to find one word that sums up the “moral clarity, that heroic ability to stand up and take a position even when there is a powerful narrative against that position.”
“For that I have a word,” Kaplan said. “In Hebrew it is gibor. In English, a champion.”
During Monday evening’s program, organizers played a video that detailed Fetterman’s support of Israel.
It showed the Senator flying a flag of Israel from his home, wearing an Israeli flag as a cape during a rally for Israel in Washington, and showing a crowd that he was wearing a Nova Music Festival wrist band, given to him by the family of a person taken hostage by Hamas when the terrorist group attacked the musical festival last year.
“I’m so sorry for the trauma your community has gone through this past year,” Fetterman told the local audience. “My vote and my voice is going to follow Israel.”
Some in his own party are angry with him for taking this stance. And pro-Palestinian demonstrators have gathered outside his home, chanting that he supports genocide. To them he says, if you want a ceasefire, address your concerns to the organizations he sees as responsible for the deaths of Palestinians well as Israelis — Hamas, the terrorist group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, and Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based paramilitary group that supports Hamas.
The video shown at the JCC includes a recording of Fetterman on stage at the May commencement ceremony for Yeshiva University in New York City. Telling the Yeshiva audience the event reminded him of his graduation from Harvard University 25 years earlier, he said he was “profoundly disappointed with Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community.”
Then, as a protest against Harvard, he removed the crimson hood from the academic attire he was wearing.
The international weekly magazine Mishpacha describes Fetterman as bucking a trend and being unafraid to isolate himself politically. People in the local audience at the JCC agreed, describing him as “very brave” and saying “he has guts.” They broke into applause frequently, and gave him a standing ovation.
But Fetterman doesn’t see himself as a hero. “The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), they’re the heroes,” he said. “I’m just the U.S. Senator all of you have elected, and I’m very grateful for this honor tonight.”
On the 6-minute video, he described himself a bit more colorfully: “I’m just a Senator with a big mouth who happens to be committed to stand with Israel.”
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