With the help of an Israeli businessman named Moti Kahana, an Afghan interpreter who had worked for the British air force since 2003 has been safely saved from the Taliban’s clutches. And the interpreter is not the only one. Jenni Frazer describes the American who funded the rescue:

The mission was paid for by Tzedek, a charity based in Brooklyn founded by Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, a member of the Skvirer ḥasidic sect.

Among those already evacuated with the help of Kahana’s organization, Global Development Corporation, and Rabbi Margaretten’s Tzedek funding are the Afghan women’s soccer team—now understood to be in Australia—and four children, hiding in a Kabul apartment, whose father was murdered by the Taliban and whose mother was desperate to bring them to America.

Moshe Margaretten, age forty, is an unlikely hero for the Afghan refugees he has helped rescue. The grandson of Holocaust survivors, the Brooklyn-based rabbi has wide contacts within the ḥasidic community and through his Tzedek operation has raised thousands of dollars to pay for the rescue missions. As well as providing funding, the rabbi has spent time in helping organize the paperwork to process the departure of many of those who have left Afghanistan.

He first began the work in order to bring out the last Jew in Afghanistan, Zebulon Simentov, but has now committed to rescue whomever he can.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.