Rabbi Lizzi delivered this speech outside the Israeli Consulate at the Rally for Humanitarian Aid for Gaza and Prioritizing the Release of Hostages on August 4th, 2025.
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I’m wearing a t-shirt today that says, Resisting Tyrants Since Pharaoh. It’s not just a slogan, it’s the core of our Jewish story. For 3,000 years, we’ve been a people who stand up in the face of oppression and injustice. When we see suffering — whether it is our own or the suffering of another person or peopl — we speak out. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.
We Jews believe that every human being is made in God’s own image, every human being Jew and Palestinian. And a tyrant, a Pharaoh, is someone who exploits and sacrifices human beings for their own power, diminishing God’s image in the world, for their own political survival. We are not surprised when Hamas, a terrorist organization, behaves this way.
But Prime Minister Netanyahu, you and your government of violent right wing Jewish extremists and your enablers — you have become like Pharoah, and we beg you, as rabbis and cantors and people who care desperately about Israelis, about Palestinians, and about the future of YOUR country — sur me’rah v’aseh tov, turn away from this rot and callousness and make teshuvah. You have killed close to 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, over 10,000 are children under the age of 11. You have sacrificed close to 1,000 of your own people in uniform, our people! You have done this for your political survival, prolonging and dragging out a war that even your supporters agree has not and will not achieve its promised results of the fantasy of complete victory over Hamas. Your foot-dragging mocks the families of the hostages! What is victory if it means justifying the starvation of children?
Prime Minister Netanyahu, Jon Polin, Hersch Goldberg Polin’s dad, months ago, asked you nicely to take off your yellow hostage pin– stop pretending that you care about the hostages. Stop pretending you care about the saving of human life over your own power. Or better yet, stop acting like Pharaoh and start acting like a Jew. Feed the hungry, like a Jew would do! Rescue the captive, like a Jew would do! Negotiate a deal, like Jews do quite successfully in every industry — you should try it!
Prime Minister Netanyahu: Stop lying to the world saying that Gaza is not starving, stop telling us not to believe what our eyes, what everyone’s eyes, can clearly see — on the bodies of Gazans and on the bodies of Evyatar David and Rom Breslaski. Your ministers told the world back in May when you put a full blockade of food and aid on Gaza, that you intended to do just this to the people of Gaza to win your war.
You’ve done it — you’ve deprived Hamas of a lifeline and are depriving Gazans food. Are Israelis safer now? Are the hostages any closer to being released now? We all know the answer.
We rabbis and cantors join the millions of Israelis who no longer support this war. Tens of thousands are marching in the streets, camped in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, are holding up signs in front of the Knesset, begging you to bring them home. Surge in aid, end this war and for God’s sake prioritize the lives of your own people and the hostages taken to Gaza on your watch.
Remember the wisdom of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, z”l, who said, You don’t make peace with your friends — you make peace with your enemies. So stop with the delay tactics, the finger-pointing, the gas lighting. Stop standing in the way of a deal and for the sake of your own people, and for the people who will always live next to you and with you, make a deal already and create the conditions for peace — so that our children and grandchildren can imagine one day, an Israel not at war but at peace.
Ken yehi ratson.