On Tuesday, the Orange County Register published an article under the headline “Why chants like ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘Am Yisrael Chai,’ and ‘From the river to the sea’ are divisive.” The second of these is a very well-known Jewish song, meaning “the people of Israel lives,” and it should come as no surprise that there are sharp divisions between those who want the Jews to live and those who wish them dead. But the song itself is a relatively new creation. Gary Rosenblatt tells its story:

It was composed by Shlomo Carlebach (1925–1994), a popular hasidic “singing rabbi,” at the request of Jacob Birnbaum, the founder of the grassroots Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, who was seeking an anthem for the fledgling Soviet Jewry movement in the spring of 1965. Birnbaum and Carlebach knew each other, as did their grandfathers.

Besides the three words, “Am Yisrael Chai,” [suggested by Birnbaum], Carlebach had added three more words to the song, based on the biblical story (Genesis 45:3) of Joseph revealing his identity to his brothers. He immediately asks about the welfare of their father, Jacob, whom Joseph has not seen in many years: “ha-od avi ḥai?” (“Is my father alive?”)

Carlebach transformed the question into an exclamatory statement of affirmation: “od avinu ḥai” (“our father is alive!”).

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.