This article will not be expressing a straightforward viewpoint regarding the conflict in Israel/Palestine. I will not say Israel is primarily to blame for the violence occurring right now, or that Hamas is mostly responsible. I won’t be “standing with” anyone, and I won’t be “divesting from” anything.
What I do want to discuss is what scares me about my family here in the United States. It’s a big family, and it’s called the American Jewish community. Right now this family seems to be doing its very best to tear itself apart.
I am not speaking about this community as an outsider. I am a college student heavily involved in Hillel on my campus and a member of the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi. I plan to work in the Jewish communal world professionally. And yet I have spent much of the last week shocked and despondent over the inability of members of the Jewish community to listen to one another.
As rockets flew over Israel and Gaza this November, we have had plenty of arguments, but respect and rationality were completely absent.
Judaism, as a religion, is a great advocate for intense debate. We can make jokes about how for every three Jews there are seven opinions, and we can awkwardly discuss the high percentage of Jewish people who become lawyers, but my people’s love for respectful, rational argument really does date back to the times of the Talmud. In a classic Talmudic story, we learn about how followers of Rabbi Hillel and followers of Rabbi Shammai completely disagreed regarding a certain law of ritual purity. Despite the fact that their ideas were mutually exclusive, we learn that “These and these are [both] the words of the living God.” In other words, both Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai’s arguments represent some amount of divine truth according to the Talmud, and respecting both of their opinions is of the utmost importance.
As rockets flew over Israel and Gaza this November, we have had plenty of arguments, but respect and rationality were completely absent.
Instead, what I saw was a community intent on a complete lack of nuance and a devotion to absolutism. It has been all of seven days since the death of Ahmed Jabari and the beginning of this newest round of violence, and yet everybody seems to know exactly how to feel about this situation. Some people are entirely positive that this situation is another example of Israel’s apartheid regime relentlessly terrorizing a bunch of civilians for no reason. Others are quite sure that this demonstrates how basically all Arabs (and they’ll say Arabs, they won’t say Hamas or even Palestinians) are the personification of evil and couldn’t care less about human life. Both of those ideas lack nuance, and both of these ideas have no basis in reality. Yet both of these ideas are considered part of the mainstream conversation.
Jewish organization after Jewish organization came out with public statements regarding the situation in Israel. Most of them included some sort of allusion to the fact that they wholeheartedly, unequivocally, stand with Israel. An organization I love quite dearly encouraged me to go and take pictures with Israeli flags so that they could display them publicly to demonstrate unconditional support for Israel. Another emotionally mentioned the fact that 1,000,000 Israelis are living in “constant fear” while the only reference they made to civilians in Gaza was that Israel “regrets” their “potential injury.” With some notable exceptions, such as J Street and Americans for Peace Now, nearly every single organization only mentioned that they are hoping and praying on behalf of citizens in Southern Israel, notably leaving out any similar hopes and prayers for the human beings whose lives are threatened in Gaza.
I have said a Hebrew prayer for the state of Israel a few times over the past week. The prayer typically begins with a request for God to “barech et medinat Yisrael” meaning that God will “bless the state of Israel.” But when I’ve said the prayer I’ve altered the Hebrew to indicate my equally intense desire for G-d to bless the people of Israel and the people of Gaza. When innocent people die, it is a tragedy, regardless of which son of Abraham they identify as their ancestral parent, and regardless of your own political beliefs. The fact that Jewish organizations do not express that same desire leaves me feeling isolated and disappointed.
I can no longer listen as Jew after Jew feels the need to mention the phrase “human shields” every time they mention the death of a child in Gaza, in effect saying that these deaths are morally commendable. I can no longer sit silently as folks on the other end of the spectrum refuse to recognize the legitimate concerns of Israeli citizens as hundreds of rockets have been fired on Israel regularly from Gaza, endangering massive numbers of people.
This conflict is not simple and it cannot be captured with a few clever sound bites or video clips. It may sound catchy to say “I stand with Israel and I always will,” but if you would really still agree with Israel no matter what conceivable actions they could take towards civilians, you need to re-evaluate your worldview. It may be convenient to say that “I stand against apartheid” but if you are willing to dumb this conflict down so as to suggest that it is just the same situation as South Africa was a few decades back, I would have similar problems with your thought process.
If we are going to advocate for peace in the Middle East, we have to do so peacefully. So far the conversation in our Jewish community has not been peaceful at all, and an incredibly large portion of our family feels abandoned. I am one of them, and I am not ready to walk away. I am tempted to say that I love this community so much that I would fight for it. But actually that’s not true. Fighting is our real enemy, and I will not engage. Instead, I love the Jewish community so much that I am choosing to not fight for it. I am placing love for human beings over love for my own voice. It would be nice if others did the same.
