I haven’t been writing anything because I’ve been drained from my job, which is working in the news industry, and because even in my free time, I can’t stop reading the news, and the news, as you know, has been heinous lately.
My day-to-day job is copy editing news stories from 25 local news TV stations, except on Saturdays when I work a 4 a.m. shift where I both copy edit news stories from TV stations and also syndicate national news stories from other outlets. Naturally, there is no way for me to avoid reading about the Israel-Hamas war and the American reaction to the Israel-Hamas war. Not that I would be avoiding it anyway. I was raised in a household where reading the news was as common as drinking water.
Every day, I think about the atrocities being inflicted upon Palestinian people and the Israeli government responsible for it. I also think about, almost every day, the Jewish American Industrial Complex, and the way American Jewish institutions have not only funded Israel, but have used propaganda to convince much of the Jewish population, from a young age, that to betray Israel in any way is a betrayal of your entire people.
So many Jews of my generation who do not stand with Israel but do support the liberation of Palestinian people grew up in heavily Zionist environments where to be an anti-Zionist is to be the black sheep of your family. I would describe my Jewish upbringing as moderately Zionist. It wasn’t taught as the most important tenant of Judaism, and it wasn’t seen as a sin to have sympathy for Palestinians, but still, Israel was seen as a sacred place we needed to protect.
I don’t feel a personal connection to Israel the way many Jews do, and I don’t have any family or friends who live there. I went once on a trip with my family in 4th grade, but I was 9 or 10 years old, and the main things I remember are floating in the Dead Sea and going to the Holocaust museum. I never went on a Birthright trip because I didn’t want to, because I didn’t really understand how I had a birthright to Israel when my family came from Russia.
I have felt so much sadness about the amount of American Jews unequivocally supporting Israel because one of the main refrains I heard at my temple growing up was “never again,” as in never again could we let a holocaust happen. And I always thought that meant never again in general, not just for my own people, because my temple once had a “Save Darfur” banner hanging off the front of the building to raise awareness about the Sudanese genocide.
And now, when genocide is unfolding at the hands of the Israeli government, with funding and weapons from the U.S. government, so many Jews are choosing to believe that it is not genocide, despite an entire people being displaced from their homes once again, despite images of parents carrying the bodies of their dead children and entire family lines wiped out. Despite cutting off electricity, water, power, and internet. Despite more journalists being killed than in any conflict in the last 30 years. Despite people in America losing their jobs for speaking out in support of Palestinians.
I know there’s a big rise in antisemitism in the U.S. and in Europe, and that’s terrible, and basically everyone fighting for the livelihoods of Palestinians agrees that it’s terrible. But what is swastika graffiti on a school compared to parents in Gaza writing their children’s names on their bodies so they can be identified if they die? What are rare, isolated incidents of antisemitic violence to a state government’s use of white phosphorus? What is a theoretical fear about what might happen to real, vivid fear about the bombs falling on your family? I’ve seen so many social media posts from Jews asking “without Israel, where will I go?” from the comfort of their homes in America while the average Palestinian in Gaza right now is living on two pieces of bread per day.
The other day at work, I read a news story from a station in New Mexico about a monument to the 1860s Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, when the U.S. government forcibly displaced Navajo/Diné populations from their homeland in Arizona and forced them to walk hundreds of miles to a barren reservation in New Mexico. They were stripped of their homes and culture and land. The same day, I read that Israel opened an “evacuation corridor” so that Palestinians could leave their homes — which will be destroyed — so that they can get to safety — from Israeli missiles.
I don’t feel scared for myself or my people, though I understand why some do. But I am scared every day for Palestinians, for their future. I am scared about how the perceived suffering of Jews is being used to justify slaughter. I am scared for everyone who can never return home.
Reading list:
Do I believe that there are questions that should never be asked?
Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
A “McCarthyite Backlash” Against Pro-Palestine Speech
The average Palestinian in Gaza is living on 2 pieces of bread a day, UN official says
The war on Gaza: A masterclass in disinformation
A kidnapped Israeli activist and two sons grappling with a war in her name
‘I will not be silenced’: Rashida Tlaib won’t stop fighting for Palestinian rights
The Anti-Defamation League Is Not What It Seems (from 2019)