Last year, an EU court upheld a Belgian law banning the kosher and halal slaughter of animals. Such regulations, note Baruch Sterman and Judy Taubes Sterman, have a long history in Europe, going back to a Swiss ban from 1893 that remains in effect. In 1934, the Irish senate considered forbidding sh’ḥitah—as the practice is known in Hebrew—leading the country’s chief rabbi, Isaac Halevy Herzog, to address the body and urge it to reconsider. A sympathizer with Irish nationalism, a friend of the Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera, and a participant in the drafting of the Irish constitution, Herzog was also a renowned halakhist who would go on to be Israel’s first chief rabbi. The Stermans describe Herzog’s case:

Herzog’s presentation [was] a masterful display of [his] unique capacity, evident throughout his career, to combine various disciplines, secular and Jewish, scientific, political, and philosophic, to make his case. . . . According to Herzog, the clear purpose of [kosher slaughter’s] detailed precepts is to prevent, or reduce significantly, any possible suffering or pain for the animal. “The charges of inhumaneness leveled against sh’ḥitah are either due to the lack of knowledge of physiology, to imperfect information, or to blind anti-Semitic prejudice,” he declared.

As support for this assertion, he submitted into evidence the opinions of no fewer than 457 “continental scientists and veterinary surgeons, mostly Gentile Christians.”

His . . . remarks highlighted a position Herzog would passionately champion again and again throughout his life. Not only did he maintain that Jewish law is inherently just and moral, but Herzog’s unwavering conviction that the Torah and its laws were given by a benevolent and compassionate God meant that, comparatively, it is indeed the most righteous and the most ethical of any legal system that has ever existed from ancient times to the present.

The Stermans quote Herzog’s “chilling” and “prescient” closing:

Lastly may I say how painful it is to the Jew to see and hear his religion charged with cruelty to animals. To those anti-sh’ḥitah humanists, whoever they may be, who charge Judaism with cruelty to dumb creatures, but who are themselves so ominously dumb in the face of the suffering, the cruelty and the agony inflicted upon Jews in Christian lands, I would say that centuries before the Aryans had any idea of humaneness towards human beings, let alone animals, . . . Israel’s Divine law commanded us to help the animal that has fallen down to rise up.

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.