The past two years have seen damage done on many fronts. In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been murdered, virtually all infrastructure has been destroyed, and the land itself has suffered enormous levels of befoulment and pollution.
Strikingly, and perhaps on an unprecedented scale, medical personnel and members of the press have been targeted for elimination. Take a minute to ponder this: Doctors, nurses, and reporters, trying to save lives and report on the ongoing tragedy, have been murdered by a supposed “western democracy.”
The much-vaunted international rules-based order has been decimated. Penalties and punishments have been directed against people of good faith who have spoken up against the madness, including people who have supported institutions such as the International Criminal Court. Protesting students and professors have been vilified, arrested, and deported.
The atrocities mentioned here, of course, are not exhaustive. Much, much more could be said.
Apologists for Israel are now asking us to believe them rather than “our lying eyes.” For example, Hillary Clinton is claiming that young people in America are turning away from Israel because of videos on social media that are “totally made up.” Democratic speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz also blames social media and adds that Jewish youth are taking the wrong lesson from Holocaust education, that lesson being that “you fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.” Apparently the correct lesson is to add to the above “unless those powerful people are Israelis.”
These are but two recent examples of how out of touch electeds and their associates are. A variety of polls indicate that increasing numbers of Americans view Israel as a purveyor of genocide. And yet our representatives in Washington, for the most part, continue to voice lies and dissimulation.
There has not been much written about the effects of all of this on the Jewish community here in the U.S. Like any group, there are gradations and differences within this population. There exist all manner of beliefs from, on the one hand, hardcore continuing support of Israel, to, on the other, pro-Palestine and anti-genocide activism.
In the face of evidence over the years to the contrary, many of our fellow Jews have continued to view Israel through the lens of a victimized people seekingrefuge in the desert. What continues to amaze us is how this one-sided Zionist myth has persisted. Let us be clear: Without question Jews have been persecuted for eons, culminating in the Shoah, catastrophe or calamity in Hebrew, perhaps more familiarly known as the Holocaust. This unthinkable destruction of a people cannot, and should not, ever be denied or minimized. Similarly, the ongoing struggle against anti-Semitism should never be weakened.
However, the creation and growth of Israel has come at a huge cost to the native population of Palestinians, who played no role in the Shoah and yet have paid, and obviously continue to pay, a huge price. They live under their own catastrophe, known in Arabic as the Nakba. They have experienced death, dispossession, occupation, and apartheid, of which the Gaza genocide is the latest incarnation.
Continued pro-Israel support, in the face of a genocide acknowledged by esteemed world human rights organizations, including some in Israel itself, has led to additional acts of moral depravity. Perhaps most disturbing of these is the invitation extended to IDF (Israel Defense Forces, more aptly referred to as IOF, Israel Occupation Forces) soldiers to speak at American synagogues and other gatherings, including here on the Central Coast of California. Have perpetrators of genocide ever before appeared in U.S. religious institutions? If so, then perhaps there is precedent, but it is no less disgusting and should be condemned.
We have refrained from protesting such events, in the belief that such actions would be seen as divisive and would feed into the institutional weaponization ofanti-Semitism, which equates it with anti-Zionism. Since the first Zionist conference in the late 19th century, Jews and others have critiqued it for numerous reasons.
We wonder where are the well-meaning people in Jewish institutional spaces who abhor the ongoing whitewashing and acceptance of evil. Where are the rabbis and others who should be speaking against not only genocide, but against the presence of these IDF figures? They are quick to rightly condemn abuse of immigrants and other outrages, but are mum on anything Palestinian. We call these people PEP, Progressive Except for Palestine.
If there ever were a time for Jews to question the orientation of their institutions and their leaders, this is that time. We are at a crossroads. This is not just about removing the nefarious Benjamin Netanyahu (we will not sugarcoat this man by calling him by his endearing, to some, nickname) from power. We must put our efforts toward: condemnation of genocide and apartheid, their proponents and actors; the immediate cessation of U.S. political and military support for Israel; and work toward an Israel/ Palestine that embodies true freedom and equality for all.
