Understanding The Israeli Conflict in the Context of Inclusion

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books some based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.? Mr. Wiesel has said, “Never be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” In that spirit, I share the following regarding the situation in Israel and Gaza.?

The atrocities committed against men, women, and children in Israel by the terrorist organization Hamas were not an effort to protect Palestinians but an act of terrorism to destroy Israel and the Jews and Christians who live there.? While we’ve seen far too many perpetuating a “both sides” narrative, creating a perverse moral equivalence between good and evil –– innocent civilians and bloodthirsty terrorists –– we must continue helping those who are overwhelmed, misled, or silent to understand that this is a false equivalency. We must support our likely and unlikely allies as they find the language and the courage to speak up.

Supporting the Israeli community in a moment of need does not in any way undermine support for Palestinian human rights. Zionism is not the government of Israel or the governing coalition; it began as a movement for national sovereignty. Zionism is about the liberation of the Jewish people in 1948 and the UN's establishment of the state of Israel (land of Zion).? In fact, the origin of the phrase “Zionism is racism” was actually Cold War Soviet propaganda targeting America and its influence in the Middle East (Israel).? You can disagree with the current administration, policies on Palestinian settlements, and/or anything about the Israeli administration – that is how democracies work, and it can be cause for protests or uprisings but does not justify the brutal acts we have witnessed this past weekend like the beheading of children and babies, burning of families locked in their homes, or taking civilians hostage.?

Hamas carried out the atrocities this weekend and is putting everyone in Gaza at risk - not in order to change Israel’s political policies. They are funded and trained by Iran and have sworn to Israel's complete destruction. We unequivocally call Hamas what it is—a terrorist group that has made its intentions clear.

More Jews were killed on Saturday than on any single day since the Holocaust. The losses for the Jewish people are absolutely staggering. The population of Israel is under 10 million people. There were over 1,200 Israelis confirmed dead from this past weekend’s depraved terror attack alone.

Many are comparing this event to 9/11, a moment that pierced our American sense of security in the world. Yet Israel’s losses would be equivalent to almost 10 9/11s this would have meant more than 30,000 New Yorkers murdered that day.

No one, progressive or otherwise, justified that attack on America, and no one, progressive or otherwise, should under any circumstances justify this one.?

We hope for the day in which the Middle East is a peaceful place for all. No one deserves to suffer, and no one deserves to live in fear. Today, we unequivocally condemn the crimes against humanity committed by these terrorists against Israel. We stand in solidarity and share in the immeasurable grief of the Jewish community.

For places to help:?https://www.standwithisrael.co.il/

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Almost every American Jew, every diaspora Jew, every Israeli American knows and cares about someone in Israel.

Refusing to condemn violence against them because of an ostensible political disagreement with their government is dehumanizing in the extreme; those who believe in social justice would never dehumanize any other entire people or nation because of disagreements over the policies of a government, and it’s hard to imagine any reason for the willingness to do so in this case, other than anti-Jewish animus––unconscious, internalized, intentional or otherwise.

Israeli Jews are not political abstractions. They are human beings, descendants of refugees who fled violent persecution and genocide, and diverse members of a complex society with complex political and geopolitical dynamics.

300,000 Israelis––Jews, Arabs, Druze, Christians––and thousands of Jews from around the world have already been called to military reserve duty.

Modern political Zionism freed the Jewish people from the gas chambers of Europe or the violent pogroms of the Arab world, and the religious persecution of the Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Israel’s existence makes Jews all over the world safe for the first and only time in Jewish history.?

Jews in America are physically safe relative to our Israeli siblings, as we are not experiencing brutal terror attacks or rockets falling on our homes. Yet we are being dehumanized in the media, on social media, and among our progressive contemporaries with painful lies and distortions that reduce our lived experience, erase the history of our people, and equate our collective existence with white supremacy, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

Jewish people have been victims of each of these depravities in living memory. Social media accounts with millions of followers are openly and unashamedly demonizing Jews in ways we cannot fathom and in ways that would be unheard of if directed at any other minority community.

Relative Jewish safety in the diaspora is a phenomenon unique to the last 75 years, a blip in the timeline of Jewish existence. Jews have largely assimilated into the mainstream in the US and Western Europe and have been represented in civic, social, and political settings by strong and varied Jewish communal institutions. Some young Jews have believed that Jewish existential vulnerability was in the past––because, thankfully, for the first time in history, antisemitism was not an everyday experience. We’ve been reminded this week, in the most horrific possible way, as we have been over the last 2 years with exponentially increasing rates of anti-Jewish animus, including violence, that this perception was wrong.

Antisemitism, anti-immigrant, and racism are intertwined forces of hate, as the animating forces of white supremacy. No matter how antisemitism manifests, its existence in any space creates divisions that make genuine solidarity and advancing an inclusive and forward-thinking agenda impossible.

It is up to all of us to fight the internalized antisemitism––as well as the anti-Blackness, misogyny, anti-LBGTQ+, Xenophobia, and all other forms of hate.