From my weekly email message to Tzedek Chicago members:
So many people have told me that they are not sure how – or even if – they will celebrate Passover this year. With the genocide and forced starvation of the people of Gaza deepening with no end in sight, they say, it just feels beyond challenging to celebrate a festival of Jewish liberation. To make the moral dissonance even more dissonant, many in the Jewish communal establishment are framing Passover by focusing exclusively on the Israeli hostages in Gaza and call for their liberation from Hamas, with nary a mention of the 34,000 Gazans who have been destroyed in the process through a terrifying war of vengeance.
I personally understand this dissonance – and I certainly don’t begrudge those who choose to scale back of forgo Passover this year. Still, I’ve personally chosen to lean in to the festival nonetheless. Despite all the challenge and pain this Passover, I believe the festival can offer us a deeper understanding of what is really transpiring in Gaza at the moment, and how we might respond to it.
In some ways, it seems to me that Passover is a kind of lens that reveals the inner nature of Jewish identity itself, through the deep dialectic between the particular and the universal. For many Jews, Passover is first and foremost about us. This approach identifies deeply with the servitude and liberation of the Jewish people throughout our history, refracting the Exodus story against centuries of anti-Jewish oppression and Jewish survival.
However, this is certainly not the only way to read the Exodus narrative. This is, after all, a mythic story, and one that has been universally embraced by a myriad of spiritual, political and social liberation movements throughout history. Oppressed people and peoples other than Jews have long identified with the experience of the Israelites: MLK, for instance, would routinely frame the civil rights movement in the context of the Israelites’ struggle against the tyranny of Pharaoh in more than a few of his sermons and speeches.
As a Jew who cherishes the value of universalism, this is how I’ve come to understand the Exodus story and the festival of Passover: as a commemoration of Jewish struggle and liberation alongside so many others past and present. On every Passover in every generation, we must ask the question out loud: who is Pharoah and who are the Israelites? Indeed, in the age of Zionism, I believe this question resonates with deep moral reckoning. As I wrote in an article during Passover 2016 (with words I could have easily written in this very moment):
As I watch this tragic process unfold this Passover, I find myself returning to the universal lesson this festival imparts on the corrupt abuse of state power. Although the Exodus story is considered sacred in Jewish tradition, it would be a mistake to assume that the contemporary state of Israel must be seen as equivalent to the biblical Israelites.
On the contrary, any people who suffer under oppressive government policies are, in a sense, Israelites. And any state — even a Jewish state — that views a people in its midst as a demographic threat can become a Pharaoh.
In Tzedek’s seder supplement for this year, we make this universal moral assertion clear in our opening reading when we proclaim, If we read the Passover story as a story of Jewish liberation alone or – God forbid – Jewish liberation at the expense of others, we will not have fulfilled the requirements of the Passover seder. Through this approach to Passover, we reject the view that casts the Jewish people as eternal victims. We affirm that Jews are among a myriad of peoples who have struggled for liberation throughout history. And we reject the zero-sum mindset that other peoples’ freedoms must be swept aside in order to make way for ours.
I realize that this approach to Passover may feel a bridge too far for many Jews: either those who vehemently reject viewing Palestinians as Israelites, or those for whom it is just too painful to gather around the seder table at such a particularly tragic time. But I can’t help but believe that Passover – and Jewish spiritual tradition itself – is creative and resilient enough to give our community a way forward with moral courage, commitment and grace.
Last Sunday, this full-page ad appeared in the Chicago Tribune: a hate-filled diatribe against Mayor Brandon Johnson for his support of the recent city council ceasefire resolution. Here it is, in full, along with my commentary.
Criticizing one resolution for “doing nothing to substantively affect the outcomes in the Middle East” is a straw man argument. No one who supported this resolution has any illusions that it alone will change the terrible facts on the ground in Israel-Palestine. It does represent, however, a civic statement of conscience. To date, over 70 US cities have passed similar ceasefire resolutions. Taken together, they constitute a collective moral call for an end to the humanitarian nightmare that has been unfolding and escalating in Gaza for the past four months.
The letter makes the unsubstantiated claim that the City Council’s resolution proceedings “fanned the flames of antisemitism.” This is a serious accusation – and it is exceedingly irresponsible to level such a claim without any examples or proof. No, ceasefire resolutions do not cause antisemitism – and protesting Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza is not antisemitic. It is a call for justice.
Chicago’s ceasefire resolution was based on a resolution passed by the UN last December, which emphasized that “the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations must be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.” It also called for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access.”
This is an exceedingly fair resolution. No, it did not absolve Hamas for the war and civilian deaths, but neither did it condemn Israel for its outrageous prosecution of a military assault that international experts and courts have have claimed fits the definition of genocide.
The letter then goes on to say that Hamas “misused humanitarian aid” – another unsubstantiated claim – and criticizes the resolution for failing to demand that Hamas disarm. Since this is an Israeli demand, to include this would be to inject an egregiously partisan statement into the resolution.
The January 30 high school walkouts were powerful demonstrations of collective student conscience that Mayor Johnson was right to support. The claim that “hundreds of CPS parents, students and teachers” were harassed during the protests is completely anecdotal and in fact, outrageous. If harassment on such a scale actually took place, there would surely be widespread press and investigations into these alleged actions. In fact, the press around the walkouts cited “worries from some CPS parents and Jewish groups that Jewish students could be targeted or made to feel uncomfortable.” There is, of course, a world of difference between “uncomfortable” and “unsafe.”
Palestinians have longpointedout that the call “from the river to the sea” is not a genocidal threat, but a demand for equality and justice for all. If that makes some Jews uncomfortable, they should interrogate their support for “the world’s only Jewish state” – an ethno-nation that does not afford equal rights to the Palestinians who happen to live between the river and the sea.
The “compromises” suggested in this letter are exceedingly more political than anything Mayor Johnson supported – and slamming him for having no expertise or empathy is hateful in its own right. What these signees really want is for him to submit to their own personal opinions about “the Jewish American experience, the underpinnings of our (sic) connection to Israel and the history and the history of the Middle East.”
For shame. These individuals speak for themselves – not for the growing numbers of American Jews who are actively protesting Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza – and who fully support Mayor Johnson’s courageous moral leadership.
It’s safe to day that International Holocaust Remembrance Day will arrive tomorrow at a deeply fraught moment for the Jewish community. Just today, we’ve received the news that the International Court of Justice, ruling on a case brought by South Africa, has ordered Israel to take action to “prevent acts of genocide” in Gaza. And later today, a federal court in California will hear a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations, Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinian Americans accusing Biden and other senior US leaders of being complicit in genocide.
In short, International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2024 is arriving just as Israel and the US government are literally being judged on the world stage for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
As we contemplate the monumental nature of this moment, it’s instructive to consider the history of International Holocaust Remembrance Day itself. This annual commemoration was created by the UN in 2005, to take place annually on January 27: the day Auschwitz was liberated by allied forces. In its resolution establishing the day, the UN General Assembly made it clear that this observance would not merely be about commemorating the past; it pointedly urged member states “to develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.”
The GA also made it explicit that this remembrance would not be limited to the European Jewry alone, but should also extend to “countless members of other minorities” who were murdered en masse by the Nazi regime. As then Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon pointedly commented during the 2015 commemoration, “More than a million inmates, primarily Jews, were brutally and systematically killed in the place where the Nazis introduced the monstrous concept of ‘industrialized murder.’ Among the other victims were non-Jewish Poles, political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, disabled persons and Jehovah’s witnesses.”
In other words, International Holocaust Remembrance Day was purposely established to universalize the memory and the lessons of the Holocaust.
There is of course, another Holocaust memorial day widely observed by the world Jewish community – namely, Yom Hashoah. In contrast, to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah is not universal in nature – it is a day set apart by the Jewish community to mourn their own in a Jewish context, as part of the Jewish festival calendar. While it is altogether appropriate for the Jewish people to honor the memories of our ancestors in such a way, it’s worth noting the history of this particular day as well.
Yom Hashoah was officially founded by an act of Israeli parliament in 1951, immediately following the founding of the state itself. It was purposefully established on Jewish date of the 27 Nisan (April/May) to begin a week of commemoration leading into Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day), concluding with Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day). In this way, Yom Hashoah served to promote the Zionist historical mythology that viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as a “rebirth,” arising out of the ashes of the Holocaust, through the brave sacrifice made by the soldiers who fought in the War of Independence.
Like many Jews growing up in America, I simply accepted Yom Hashoah as an organic part of the rhythm of the Jewish year, observed annually in synagogue services and communal commemorations. I was never taught that it was first and foremost an Israeli national holiday. And of course, I was never taught that the state of Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust was established through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homes.
While there should most certainly be a communal Jewish day of memorial for the six million, it’s worth questioning the prominent status afforded Yom Hashoah by world Jewry. This is, after all, a day that serves to reinforce the view that the Israel’s founding was a “redemptive” moment for the Jewish people following the tragic cataclysm of the Holocaust – utterly ignoring the reality that the state of Israel was established through the dispossession of another people. I strongly believe we should consider an entirely different Jewish frame for commemorating the Holocaust; in the meantime, however, we should have no illusions about the real agenda behind Yom Hashoah and the problematic narrative it seeks to support.
It might well be said that in this terrifying current moment, the very real implications of this Zionist mythology are being directly challenged by the universal message of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s actually quite staggering to consider: as the world prepares to observe this day, compelling legal proceedings are formally accusing Israel of (and the US of abetting) genocide. Even more sobering: it arrives amidst an increasingly damning verdict in the court of public opinion in which, according to a recent poll, “more than one in three Americans believe Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.”
I realize how painful – even unthinkable – it will be for many Jews to lift up the lessons of International Holocaust Remembrance Day to suggest Israel that is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. But as I suggested in my sermon this past Yom Kippur, we must find the courage to say out loud the words that must be spoken. If this particular day is truly is to be a day for us to apply the “lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide,” it is all the more critical for us to speak out and name a genocide that is literally unfolding before us in real time. No matter how uncomfortable or painful the prospect.
In this regard, I’m immensely proud to be part of a Jewish community that has the courage to say these words out loud. In a just released public letter to President Biden, the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council is demanding that he “honor the word and spirit of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day by using (his) office to bring a ceasefire to this tragic violence — and to stop blocking efforts toward building a truly just peace for all who live between the river and the sea.”
An excerpt:
We hold the traumatic history of our people with care and sensitivity — and know how painful it is for Jews to grasp that a Jewish state could possibly commit a genocide. Nevertheless, we must agree with increasing numbers of scholars and international rights experts who have determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute, in the words of Prof. Raz Segal, “a textbook case of genocide.”
We support and uplift South Africa’s recent application to the International Court of Justice claiming Israel is in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. And now, Palestinian human rights organizations, together with Palestinians in the US and Gaza, are bringing a case against your administration for failure to prevent, and complicity in, the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide against them, their families, and the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza. We stand in support of their action as well.
According to a core teaching of Jewish spiritual tradition, humanity was created in the image of God. That means that each and every human being is of infinite value. The UN 1948 Convention on Genocide was created to uphold this very idea. The Torah also teaches that there will always be moments when we must make a critical moral choice. As Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life.” President Biden, you have chosen death. Instead of using your considerable power to prevent or end this genocide, you have directly abetted it with weapons, funds and diplomatic cover.
On this day of remembrance in 2021, you noted that, “The Holocaust was no accident of history.” As you stated, “It occurred because too many governments cold-bloodedly adopted and implemented hate-fueled laws, policies, and practices to vilify and dehumanize entire groups of people, and too many individuals stood by silently. Silence is complicity.”
President Biden, what is happening right now in Gaza is no accident of history — and your complicity has been anything but silent. We call upon you to be true to your word and end US complicity in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken. This International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us find the courage to speak the words that must be spoken: Ceasefire now. Never again, for anyone. No more genocide.
Remarks by Maya Schenwar, from last night’s Tu B’shvat gathering sponsored by Tzedek Chicago and the Jewish Fast for Gaza. (Maya is director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism. She is also a coordinator of the Jewish Fast for Gaza and a member of Tzedek Chicago.)
Many of those of us involved in Jewish Fast for Gaza are breaking our fast tonight. We’ve been fasting weekly on Sundays since mid-October, and we will keep fasting weekly until a ceasefire. We donate the money we would’ve spent on food to organizations supporting people in Gaza in this time of starvation and mass death. And each week, we are also reflecting on and renewing our commitment to solidarity with our Palestinian co-strugglers and people around the world who are calling for an end to this genocide, an end to US funding for Israel’s weapons, an end to colonization and apartheid.
When we call for a ceasefire, when we fast for a ceasefire, we are uplifting a call for life. In the months since October 7, I’ve heard many people quote Ruth Wilson’s Gilmore’s sacred words, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” And one of the things Ruthie is saying, with that message, is that in societies where life is actually treated as precious—where they don’t have the death penalty and life sentences and large-scale state violence and state-sanctioned environmental devastation—in those places, violence is less likely overall, the culture is less violent, because life is affirmed.
We should bear in mind that as the US fuels Israel’s genocide in Gaza, here in the US, Alabama is preparing to carry out the US’s first execution via nitrogen gas—which is torture—on the day of Tu B’Shvat.
People are more likely to treat life as precious when their own lives are treated as precious. So we have to create the conditions in which everyone’s life is treated as inherently sacred and irreplaceable. That work is on all of us.
Our Fast for Gaza draws inspiration from the Jewish tradition of fasting as an act of mourning, and it also draws inspiration from Palestinians incarcerated inside Israeli jails, who have launched many hunger strikes to protest their incarceration, and the incarceration of all Palestinians under occupation, to INSIST that their lives are precious.
When Ruth Wilson Gilmore first introduced this idea—where life is precious, life is precious—she was at an environmental justice conference for youth, where, among other things, the youth denounced the effects of pesticides, including on humans– and of course, pesticides also have impacts on native plants and animals. I think this is significant, for Tu B’Shvat. Recognizing that all life is precious means recognizing our interconnection with all life around us. It means we need to, in the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, “awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” It means recognizing the ways that trees have been weaponized to push Palestinians off their land. It means recognizing Israel’s mass destruction of olive trees.
Trees themselves recognize that where life is precious, life is precious. Forests are social systems in which trees support each other through their root systems, through chemical signals in their leaves, through the social climate they create. As we celebrate the trees’ birthday today, we can also celebrate their preciousness, the preciousness of all the life they nurture and that nurtures them. And we can express that through our urgent calls for a ceasefire, for Palestinian liberation, and for collective liberation.
When we say ceasefire now, we are also saying environmental justice now. When we say ceasefire now, it is a call for Indigenous liberation now, from Palestine to Turtle Island and beyond.
Ceasefire now can be a call to stop death penalties of all kinds, including this execution that is set to happen in our own country on the day of Tu B’Shvat. Let’s insist on the preciousness of people, and of trees, and of the interconnectedness of all beings.
The introduction to the book of Exodus, which we begin reading this Shabbat, has never resonated so deeply or so powerfully for me as it does this very moment.
We’re all familiar with the events that spark the Exodus narrative: a new Pharoah arises over Mitzrayim who does not know or remember Joseph. Alarmed that the Israelite minority is growing, he oppresses them with forced labor – but the more he oppresses them, the more the Israelites increase in number.
Pharoah then attempts to stem the Israelite birth rate directly by ordering the Hebrew midwives Shifra and Puah to kill every newborn boy. When they defy his order, Pharoah orders that every newborn boy be cast into the Nile. Commentators differ on why Pharoah made this very specific decree. Some say that in his paranoia, he believed the boys would eventually grow up to be soldiers and take up arms against his people. Other say his soothsayers predicted the birth of Moses. Still others say Pharoah believed that the Israelite women would intermarry and assimilate into the majority culture.
Whatever the reason, it is striking to note that Exodus’ liberation narrative begins with Pharoah’s efforts to head off the Israelite birth rate. As I’ve noted before, there are powerful parallels between this narrative and the state of Israel’s regard of the Palestinian people as a “demographic threat” to their Jewish majority. But in the midst of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, I’m finding that these verses now resonate with a brutal – and almost unbearable – urgency.
On November 3, less than a month into Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and other NGOs reported that “Women, children and newborns in Gaza are disproportionately bearing the burden of the escalation of hostilities in the occupied Palestinian territory, both as casualties and in reduced access to health services.” More recently, the UN estimated that “around 50,000 pregnant women are currently living in Gaza, with more than 180 births taking place every day amid the ‘decimation’ of its healthcare system.”
The most devastating details on the impact of this onslaught on Gazan mothers can be read in the South African government’s application to the International Court of Justice, formally accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. I strongly recommend reading this document in its entirety. Though South Africa’s claim was cynically dismissed by the White House as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” its 84 page report is painstakingly researched, citing 574 independent sources. Though it is often near-unbearable to read, I believe it is an immensely important document and deserves the widest possible readership.
Here is a sample of the report’s findings on impact of Israel’s genocidal violence on pregnant women and newborn babies. Please be warned: the following quote it includes very graphic descriptions of traumatic violence inflicted on women and children.
Pregnant women and children –– including newborn babies –– are also particularly impacted by displacement, lack of access to food and water, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation, and lack of access to health services. These effects are severe and significant. An estimated 5,500 of approximately 52,000 pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza giving birth each month are doing so in unsafe conditions, often with no clean water, much less medical assistance, “in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening, and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise”. Where they are able to get to a functioning hospital, pregnant women are having to undergo caesarean sections without anaesthetic.
Given the lack of access to critical medical supplies, including blood, doctors are being compelled to perform ordinarily unnecessary hysterectomies on young women in an attempt to save their lives, leaving them unable to have more children. Indeed, the Minister of Health for the State of Palestine, Dr May al-Kaileh, confirms that the only option facing Palestinian women in Gaza who ‘bleed out’ after giving birth is to undergo a hysterectomy in order for their lives to be saved. The lack of available drugs, such as the anti-D injection –– given to Rhesus negative women on the birth of a Rhesus positive baby –– also seriously impacts the possibility of future healthy pregnancies for affected women.
Premature births have reportedly increased by between 25-30 per cent, as stressed and traumatised pregnant women face a myriad of challenges, including being compelled to walk long distances in search of safety, attempting to escape from bombs and being crowded into shelters in often squalid conditions. Particularly in northern Gaza, cases of placenta abruption –– a serious condition that occurs to pregnant women during childbirth which is potentially life-threatening to both mother and baby –– have more than doubled.
An ever-increasing number of Palestinian babies in Gaza are reportedly dying from entirely preventable causes, brought about by Israel’s actions: newborns up to three months old are dying of diarrhea, hypothermia, and other preventable causes. Without essential equipment and medical support, premature and underweight babies have little to no chance of survival. Palestinian newborn babies have died due to the lack of fuel to supply hospital generators; others have been found decomposing in their hospital cots, medical staff taking care of them having been forced by Israel to evacuate.
On 3 November 2023, the World Health Organisation warned that “[m]aternal deaths are expected to increase given the lack of access to adequate care”, with deadly consequences on reproductive health, including a rise in stress-induced miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births. The impact will necessarily be long lasting and severe for Palestinians in Gaza as a group. By 22 November 2023 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, has expressly warned that:
“[T]he reproductive violence inflicted by Israel on Palestinian women, newborn babies, infants, and children could be qualified as… acts of genocide under Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide … including “imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group”. She stressed that “States must prevent and punish such acts in accordance with their responsibilities under the Genocide Convention.”
(Sections 96-100)
If there could be any doubt as to the question of intentionality behind these barbaric measures, the section immediately following these findings includes exhaustive quotes by Israeli politicians and military leaders that make their genocidal intentions all too clear. Most chillingly, it offers this quote from 95-year old Israeli army reservist Ezra Yachin — a veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the 1948 Nakba — who was called up for reserve duty to “boost morale” amongst Israeli troops ahead of the ground invasion: Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. . . Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. (Section 102)
In this week’s Torah portion, the cry of the oppressed Israelites rises up to God, who hears and hearkens to their pain. This year, there can be no more critical question posed by our Torah portion: will God hearken to the collective cry of the people of Gaza?
Last week, the board of my congregation, Tzedek Chicago released this statement in repsonse to Israel’s ongoing military assault in Gaza. Although it is addressed to all people of conscience, it contains a specific challenge to the Jewish community at large.I’m immensely proud of the statement, which I hope will be considered seriously even (especially) by those members of the community aren’t ready to heed its words.
Our statement is not so much an academic argument as it is a call to moral action. As we say in our statement, “We are witnessing the continuation of the Nakba in real time…Now more than ever, it is time for Jews of conscience to call out the essential injustice at the heart of Zionism in no uncertain terms.“
The full statement follows below:
The unspeakable violence currently unfolding in Gaza is confronting the Jewish community with the most critical moral challenge of our lifetime.
As of this writing, over 21,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, almost half of them children. According to the UN, nearly two million people have been internally displaced, confining them to less than one-third of the Gaza Strip’s territory. Disease and starvation are rampant, subjecting one in four households into “catastrophic conditions.” As the Secretary General of the UN recently described, “(Gaza) is at a breaking point. There is a high risk of a total collapse of the humanitarian system.”
Together with Jews and allies around the world, we grieve the massive loss of life that occurred as a result of Hamas’ heinous violence in Israel on October 7. We join with those around the world who are demanding the safe return of the remaining hostages currently being held in Gaza. We unreservedly condemn Hamas’ actions on that terrible day – there can be no justification for this brutal attack on civilian life.
We also know there was a crucial, underlying context to this horrible violence. We assert without reservation that to contextualize is not to condone. On the contrary, we must contextualize these events if we are to truly understand them – and find a better way forward.
The violence of October 7 did not occur in a vacuum. It was a brutal response to a regime of structural violence that has oppressed Palestinians for decades. At the root of this oppression is Zionism: a colonial movement that seeks to establish and maintain a Jewish majority nation-state in historic Palestine.
While Israel was founded in the traumatic wake of the Holocaust to create safety and security for the Jewish people, it was a state founded on the backs of another people, ultimately endangering the safety and security of Jews and Palestinians alike. Israel was established through what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba: the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. And since that time, Israel has subjected Palestinians to a regime of Jewish supremacy in order to maintain its demographic majority in the land.
This ongoing Nakba is the essential context for understanding the horrifying violence of the past three months. Indeed, since October 7, Israeli politicians have been terrifyingly open about their intentions, making it clear that the ultimate end goal of their military assault is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its 2.2 million Palestinian residents. One prominent member of the Israeli government put it quite plainly: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.” More recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu was reported as saying that he is actively working to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza. The problem, he said, “is which countries will take them.”
Israeli leaders are being true to their word: we are witnessing the continuation of the Nakba in real time. As in 1948, Palestinians are being driven from their homes through force of arms. As in 1948, families are being forced to march long distances with hastily-collected possessions on their backs. As in 1948, entire regions are being razed to the ground, ensuring that they will have no homes to return to. As in 1948, Israel is actively engineering the wholesale transfer of an entire population of people.
In a statement last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons warned:
As evacuation orders and military operations continue to expand and civilians are subjected to relentless attacks on a daily basis, the only logical conclusion is that Israel’s military operation in Gaza aims to deport the majority of the civilian population en masse.
In short: Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza is revealing the true face of Zionism.
From its founding, Tzedek Chicago has openly rejected the conflation of Judaism with Zionism. As expressed in our congregation’s core values statement: We are anti-Zionist, openly acknowledging that the creation of an ethnic Jewish nation state in historic Palestine resulted in an injustice against the Palestinian people – an injustice that continues to this day.
Since Israel’s most recent military assault on Gaza began, Tzedek Chicago has been a proud and active participant in the cease-fire movement, which has been steadily growing in the Jewish community. This movement is collectively motivated by the Jewish mitzvah of pikuach nefesh – the sacred imperative to save life. At the same time, however, it is critical to assert the Jewish value of “tzedek, tzedek tirdof” – “justice, justice shall you pursue.” Beyond ceasefire, we must acknowledge and call out the human dispossession that is at the root of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza.
Now more than ever, it is time for Jews of conscience to call out the essential injustice at the heart of Zionism in no uncertain terms. This is a critical moment for our Jewish communal organizations as well. We know it is not easy for Jewish institutions to reject Zionism, but we believe it’s critical that they do. In particular, we ask synagogues that are proudly “standing with Israel” to morally reckon with whom they are choosing to stand and consider the real human costs of their position.
There are some Jewish congregations that maintain an inclusive “wide tent” that makes room for both Zionists and anti-Zionists alike. While this may seem like a welcome development, we encourage these synagogues to consider how this inherently contradictory position nonetheless enables the violence Israel is perpetrating against Palestinians. We also invite congregations that publicly support “Palestinian liberation” to be clear about what this liberation will ultimately look like. Will it be a liberation in name only or will it include the dismantling and transformation of the colonial Zionist project once and for all?
The moral challenge of the moment is clear. We invite other Jews of conscience to join us in the creation of a thriving movement of Judaism beyond Zionism. A Judaism that lifts up a diasporic consciousness that doesn’t express entitlement over land. A Judaism that rejects ethno-nationalism, militarism and dispossession and celebrates our spiritual tradition of justice, liberation and solidarity with all who are oppressed.
Let our call for ceasefire be but the first step toward a greater liberation: one that extends true justice and equality for all who live between the river and the sea.
Here are the remarks, below, that I delivered at Chicago City Hall yesterday at a meeting of the Committee on Health and Human Relations as it considered an endorsement of UN Resolution 377, which calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. I was among a panel of community members – which included historian Dr. Barbara Ransby and State Rep. Abdulnasser Rashid – who offered statements at the meeting. In the end, the committee voted unanimously to approve the resolution, which will now go before the entire city council in January.
As has been the case with many local legislative bodies around the county, the politics around the issue of ceasefire has been marked by deep cowardice and toxicity. In October, the city council passed a strongly worded resolution in support for Israel that only glancingly referred to Palestinians – or to Israel’s rapidly escalating military onslaught on Gaza. As it became clear that the very word “ceasefire” was a political non-starter, Alder Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez of the 33rd Ward decided to build supportfor the UN resolution as chair of the Committee on Health and Human Services. Such is the politics of ceasefire in this horrid moment: it takes these kinds of torturous procedural efforts just to get a city council to call for an end to genocidal violence that has killed 20,000 people, almost half of whom are children.
Due to time constraints, I didn’t read my entire statement. Here are my remarks, in full:
I’m honored to be able to offer these remarks here today in support of this resolution. I agree with so much of the powerful testimony that was given during public comment and I want to thank the speakers for those remarks. I don’t want to go over much of what has been said other than to say I lift up the sentiment of outrage over the genocidal violence that Israel is committing in Gaza even as we speak.
But I would like to speak in particular, as a leader in the Jewish community, to many of the disingenuous and frankly false claims about Jews, about Judaism, about Zionism, about antisemitism that are being lifted up over the past two plus months during this terrible, tragic time. I hope it will at least provide a little bit of context as we start to consider the importance of calling for a ceasefire and our support of this resolution here in the city of Chicago.
We are living, at this very moment, through an extraordinary moment of reckoning. It’s not an understatement to say that the ongoing, unspeakable violence in Israel-Palestine is confronting us with the most critical moral challenge of our lifetimes. I can personally attest that this is most certainly the case in the Jewish community. Hamas’ violent attack on October 7 has deeply traumatized Israelis and many Jews throughout the world. This trauma, however, is not being manifest in one particular way. There are many Jews, myself included, who are deeply grieving these losses, who pray for the safe return of Israeli hostages – but who are also anguished and appalled at the massive violence and trauma Israel has been unleashing on the people of Gaza.
The Jewish community has never been monolithic – and it certainly has never been lockstep on the issue of Israel. And right now, the divisions within our community are becoming manifest in unprecedented ways. For the past two months, day after day, thousands of Jews have been organizing and taking to the streets throughout the country, engaging in relentless acts of civil disobedience to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The events of the past two months reflect an important trend that has long been growing in the American Jewish community. The traditional legacy Jewish organizations, who have typically purported to speak for the Jewish community have become increasingly out of touch on the issue of Israel-Palestine. Over the past two decades, every Jewish communal survey has shown support for the state of Israel steadily eroding in the American Jewish community.
Moreover, the percentage of Jews – particularly young Jews – who identify as anti-Zionist is growing. We are pushing back strongly on the fallacy that Judaism = Zionism – and the deeply disingenuous accusation that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. We hear this claim being made repeatedly by the state of Israel and its advocates in the American Jewish establishment. Here’s but one example: Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who has been repeating this accusation over and over again in recently said this in an interview with the New Yorker:
Zionism, a desire to go back to Jerusalem, the longing for Zion, isn’t something that David Ben-Gurion came up with. It isn’t something that Theodor Herzl came up with. It has been embedded in the faith and the traditions of Judaism for thousands of years. You can’t open a Torah on a Saturday morning for your daily prayer, you can’t go through a holiday, without seeing these references.
I’d like to address this claim head on because it a deeply inaccurate statement – and in its way, even dangerous. Greenblatt is of course correct that there is an important connection in Judaism to the Land of Israel. And yes, this connection is quite clear throughout the Torah, liturgy and Jewish tradition in general. However – and this is a big however – the notion of creating a political Jewish nation state was never part of Jewish tradition until the rise of the Zionist movement in the 19th century.
Judaism is a centuries-old Jewish peoplehood. Zionism is a political movement of modernity that arose in Europe that sought to radically change Jewish identity and Jewish life. For most of Jewish history, the yearning to return to Zion was expressed as an idealized messianic vision. Some Jews made pilgrimage to the land. And a small minority of indigenous Jews consistently lived in historic Palestine throughout the centuries. But the rabbis fervently opposed the establishment of a 3rd Jewish commonwealth in historic Palestine. They actually considered it to be blasphemous – a “forcing of God’s hand” to create something that could and should only occur in the messianic age.
From the very beginning, there has always been principled Jewish opposition to Zionism. Many Jews have embraced anti-Zionism not as a matter of traditional messianic belief, but as a matter of Jewish moral and political conscience. We recognize that there is a fundamental injustice at the core of Zionism, namely, the creation of a Jewish majority state through the dispossession and oppression of another people.
It is important to note that political Zionism is a form of ethno-nationalism. In other words, the Jewish identity of the state of Israel is predicted on the maintenance of a majority of one particular group of people in the land. Up until 1948, Jews were a minority in Palestine – and this necessarily posed a problem for the Zionist movement. In the end, the state of Israel could only be created one way: through what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. Today, even many Israeli historians agree: the state of Israel was founded through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their homes and Israel’s refusal to let them return. This is what happened in 1948 – and this dispossession of Palestinians to make way for a Jewish state has been happening every day for the past 75 years.
In 2021, B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights organization released a 300-page report in which it concluded, “The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire are.” I want to make this clear: a prominent Israeli human rights organization has said that Israel has created a regime of Jewish supremacy between the river and the sea. This is not an antisemitic claim – it is a claim rooted international law and human rights. This is what it means when Palestinians and solidarity activists call for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea” – they are expressing basic human rights that we all take for granted – or should. And it is not antisemitic to say so.
Are there some individual anti-Zionists who antisemitic? Undoubtedly. But it is disingenuous and wrong to claim that anti-Zionism is fundamentally antisemitic. As I said earlier, there are increasing numbers of Jews, myself included, whose are anti-Zionist as a deep expression of our Jewish values. Torah teaches that all human beings are created in the divine image, that we must seek justice and liberation for all. It teaches that love for Zion is not divine entitlement to a piece of land, but an expression of a Zion consciousness. That the land – like the entire earth itself – does not belong to us but to God, and we are but strangers upon it.
Another central precept of Judaism is the prophetic injunction, “Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.” This sacred imperative is what compels us to reject Israel’s militarism or to affirm in any way that Jewish state power will keep Jews safe. If there was ever any doubt, the events of the last two months should make this abundantly clear. It makes us all less safe – Jewish and Palestinians alike. And make no mistake: if this nightmarish war should spread through the region, it will endanger the safety and security of us all.
This why so many of us in the Jewish community are literally taking to the streets, calling for an immediate ceasefire and return of all hostages. This is why we welcome and support resolutions like UN Resolution 377. And this is why we are urging our political leaders, on every level, to join the call for ceasefire. This is moment of deep moral reckoning for us – and for the world. History will judge us by our action or our inaction in this critical moment. And that is why I urge us all to support the cause of justice and peace for all who live between the river and the sea – and for all who dwell and earth.
Again, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.
As we well know, there have been, in recent years, increasingly vociferous calls from the Israeli government, Israel advocates and Jewish institutions to label anti-Zionism as antisemitism. While it’s a troubling phenomenon, it’s not too difficult to understand why this is happening. To put it simply: our numbers are growing. The patently oppressive nature of the Zionist project is becoming all too clear to growing numbers of people – particularly in the younger generation. Indeed, there’s a detect a distinct tone of desperation in the equation of anti-Zionism = antisemitism, and the attempt to literally “excommunicate” those who refuse to attach our Judaism to an entho-nationalist Jewish state.
Not surprisingly, since October 7, Israel and Israel’s supporters have doubled down on this equation – and on the centrality of Zionism in general. Even Joe Biden, during his visit to Israel in October, stated pointedly, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” And now, the US House of Representatives have weighed in as well. This past Tuesday, the House, by an overwhelming majority, passed a bill asserting that “the Jewish people are native to the land of Israel” and that “denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism.”
The insistence on Israel’s “right to exist” has long been a red herring in debates over Israel/Palestine. It is essentially a euphemism for the Zionist justification of a Jewish majority state in historic Palestine, which by definition views Palestinians as a demographic threat to the “existence” of the Jewish state. Not surprisingly, the resolution makes no mention of the Palestinian people, who themselves have a fairly compelling claim to being “native to the land.”
If ever there was a moment for Jewish anti-Zionists to proudly stand up and be counted, this is it. And if ever there was a more terrifying demonstration of the end game of Zionism, it is Israel’s military assault on Gaza. From the outset, the raison d’etre of Zionism was the creation of a Jewish state by acquiring the greatest amount of land with the least amount of Palestinians. Over the past few weeks, Israeli politicians have been terrifyingly open about their intentions in this regard, making it clear that their ultimate end goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its residents, thereby eliminating up to 2.2 million Palestinians from the demographic equation. In the meantime, the Israeli military is systemically reducing that equation through its genocidal onslaught on Gaza’s population. As a recent New York Times article chillingly pointed out, “experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.”
With the internal logic of Zionism becoming so clear for all to see, it isn’t surprising to witness increasing numbers of Jews proudly and openly identifying as anti-Zionist. If we needed any evidence, the regular public protests of Jews calling for a ceasefire in Gaza – and who are willing to take arrest in the thousands – are a powerful testimony to this phenomenon. And I am proud to say that Tzedek Chicago is on the vanguard of this phenomenon as well: over the past two months, we have acquired close to 30 new member households, almost all of them attesting that they are actively seeking out an anti-Zionist Jewish congregation in this critical moment.
It’s not an overstatement to say that the Jewish community is currently facing a critical “which side are you on?” moment. While much of the Jewish establishment is doubling down on Zionism and Israel’s genocidal war effort, the so-called liberal quarters of the Jewish community are facing a reckoning as well. It’s now abundantly clear that the very term “liberal Zionism” is an oxymoronic contradiction in terms. There is simply nothing liberal about a nation state predicated exclusively on the demographic majority of one particular group of people.
Lately, we’ve been hearing news of Jewish congregations that promote an “open tent” approach when it comes to Zionism – i.e., congregations that openly make room for the views of non and anti-Zionists along with liberal Zionists in their communities. Though this might seem to be a welcome development, I have to ask myself, is this so-called open-tent ultimately tenable? Is it sustainable? Is it even ethical: to build congregational communities in which members have such fundamentally different moral approaches to being Jewish? In which some congregational members cherish and celebrate an ethno-nationalist Jewish project, while others rightly call it out as an apartheid, settler colonial state? However well meaning, I cannot view this as anything other than an untenable, unbridgeable divide.
In a recent episode of the Truthout podcast, “Movement Memos,” I commented sadly on this divide: From my vantage point as a Jewish American, I can attest that our community has now been deeply, profoundly broken, perhaps irrevocably. … I am staggered by the voices in the Jewish community that support Israel’s atrocities without reservation. Otherwise so-called progressive leaders who cannot get themselves to endorse a simple ceasefire. When the dust settles — and please may it settle soon — I don’t know if the brokenness of my community will ever, ever truly heal from this.
While I still grieve over the moral brokennness of the Jewish community, I am proud to be part of a congregation that openly places itself on the side of the divide that celebrates a Jewish tradition of solidarity and liberation for all. For all who live between the river and the sea – and for all who dwell on earth.
According to Jewish law, it is forbidden to mourn on Shabbat: between sundown on Friday and sundown on Saturday, funerals do not take place and the public aspects of shiva observance are suspended. For many, the very notion “forbidding mourning” can feel harsh and emotionally insensitive. I’ve often heard from mourners who resist this idea of “suspending their grief.” More than one congregant has pointed this out to me over the years: “Grief isn’t something I can just turn on and off. How do I possibly stop my grieving for this one day? Should I pretend that Shabbat will just magically make everything better?”
One way to answer to this question is to understand the difference between grief and mourning. While grief is an emotional state; mourning refers to the rituals and practices we observe to help us manuever through our experience of loss. Of course, we cannot turn our grief on and off, nor should we be expected to. Grief by its very nature cannot be scheduled to our convenience. As anyone who has experienced the loss of a loved one will attest, the emotions that attend grief will invariably grip us with unsettling randomness – often when we least expect it.
When we suspend certain mourning practices on Shabbat, however, even in the midst of intense grief, we affirm a life beyond the loss, beyond the pain. Shabbat is our weekly reminder of this: our regular opportunity to experience olam haba – “the world as it should be.” When we suspend these rituals on Shabbat, we make a point of affirming healing during the most painful times in our lives. In some ways, it feels like nothing less than an act of spiritual defiance.
For over a month now, it has been a time of unimaginable, exponential, cascading grief on a scale few of us have ever seen. Israelis and scores of Jews the world over are still experiencing deep shock and trauma over Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7. Even as I write these words, we do not know the full extent of these massacres and abductions – many still do not know if their loved ones are alive or dead, whether they were killed or taken hostage. We are still learning the heinous nature of the attacks that unfolded on that terrible day. How does one even begin to mourn when faced with grief of such magnitude?
Tragically, we were never given the opportunity to learn the answer to this question. Only a few days after this attack, the Israeli government chose to respond with a vengeful military onslaught. metabolizing and weaponizing its grief against an imprisoned population of 2.2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza with nowhere to run. The exponential human loss Israel has unleashed is truly beyond comprehension: to date, the current death toll: 12,000 people, including 5,000 children.
For so many of us, the only work of the past six weeks has been to voice our collective conscience as loudly, as often and as fiercely as possible. We have been bearing witness to the most sacred values of our tradition: pikuach nefesh – saving a life is sacrosanct and tzelem elohim – affirming that all humanity is created in the divine image. All of these values are embodied in the two sacred words we’ve been chanting over and over and over again: “Ceasefire Now!” To end this vengeful, genocidal violence. To negotiate a homecoming for hostages and prisoners. To begin the process of rebuilding and healing through a process of just peace for all.
No, as Shabbat falls this evening, we will not “switch off our grief.” We will not deny this all-pervading, still unfolding pain. But we will affirm a world beyond it.
We know all too well that in moments of brokenness, it is difficult to imagine a world beyond. We know from experience that brokenness, by definition, involves loss. We know that what is broken can never be put back exactly the same way it was. But beyond the loss, Shabbat comes to remind us that no matter what, we never forfeit the chance to rebuild and heal. While grief can break us open, it also has the potential to transform us: opening us up to new visions, new opportunities, new worlds that we never may have dreamed possible.
In this moment, when so much around us seems to be shattering into so many painful shards, let us hold tightly to this truth.
As Israel intensifies its horrific military assault on Gaza – at current count, over 8,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 3,000 children – the popular call for a ceasefire in Gaza is growing powerfully around the US and throughout the world. Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets. Jewish Voice for Peace, together with other Jewish groups, have organized massive actions of civil disobedience in Washington DC, New York City and other cities throughout the North America. Last Friday, “Rabbis for Ceasefire” released a new initiative that included a video calling for a “complete ceasefire now.” To date, over 100 rabbis have signed on to our statement.
As I wrote in my previous post, there is still a discernable resistance to the call for a ceasefire from members of the Jewish community. That resistance now seems to have developed a public call of its own: “Free the Hostages Now.” Over the past week or so, this adversarial binary has been echoing throughout social media in the form of dueling memes. When I posted a “Ceasefire Now” profile picture on my Facebook page, a FB friend immediately added the comment, “Free the Hostages” as a kind of knee-jerk rejoinder to my public statement. The increasing back and forth between these two demands has all but turned into a perverse game of rhetorical ping-pong.
As I consider this phenomenon, I can’t help but think that this alternative call is presenting us with a moral litmus test – as if those who advocate for a ceasefire without also demanding a release of the hostages somehow favor Palestinian lives over Israeli lives. As if calling for a ceasefire expresses concern for Palestinians only and not all who happen to be in Gaza at this terrifying moment.
Of course, any humane person would and should desire a return of the hostages. The details of Hamas’ mass murders and their abduction of hostages have been appalling and horrific to behold. But just as we struggled to comprehend the scope the trauma that occurred on October 7, our grief was weaponized and metabolized into a war of vengeance. Before we had time to even catch our breath, Israel immediately initiated a massive scorched earth military campaign in Gaza, unleashed a scale of death and destruction that has magnified this grief to unimaginable proportions.
It has been truly unsettling to witness the apocalyptic language used by Israeli leaders to describe the military objectives of this withering assault. Despite their claim to be prioritizing the release of the hostages, Israeli leaders have made it clear that vengeance and the destruction of Hamas – along with the rest of Gaza – is its primary objective. On October 11, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said, “It is an entire nation who are responsible. This rhetoric about civilians being uninvolved is absolutely untrue…We will fight until we break their backs.” More recently, Israeli PM Netanyahu compared their military assault to the commandment to destroy the Amalekites – the divine Biblical imperative to wipe out an entire people completely.
Amidst this unsparing bombing campaign, family members of hostages have been speaking openly about their fear that their loved ones will be killed before they can be rescued. The father of one hostage has said “We are very worried about our loved ones who are there and we don’t know if the military operation will take those hostages under consideration, (to make sure) that no one will be injured.” Others are imploring their government to engage diplomatically to ensure the return their loved ones in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Indeed, the issue of Palestinian prisoners raises a crucial piece of context that has been regularly been lost in discussions of the current hostage crisis. Over the past several decades, in fact, there has been precious little discussion in the mainstream media of Israel’s practice of imprisoning Palestinians in military prisons as well as in “administrative detention” – a central feature of its brutal occupation. While many Palestinian prisoners have been committed violent acts against Israelis, many more are imprisoned without anything remotely resembling due process. Israel’s Military Order 101 has essentially criminalized civic activities under the basis of “hostile propaganda and prohibition of incitement.” The order, which is still in use in the occupied West Bank, outlaws the participation and organization of protests, printing and distributing political material, waving flags and other political symbols – and any activity that demonstrates sympathy for an organization deemed illegal under military orders.
As described by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem:
In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit. The person is detained without legal proceedings, by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them. This leaves the detainees helpless – facing unknown allegations with no way to disprove them, not knowing when they will be released, and without being charged, tried or convicted.
Unjust illegal imprisonment has long been a way of life for the Palestinian people. It has been estimated that four in ten Palestinian men have spent time in Israeli jails. According to the Palestinian prisoner support and human rights organization Adameer, there are currently, 1264 administrative detainees – and 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners overall – currently being held in Israeli prisons.
As has been widely noted, Palestinian minors are also among the imprisoned. Defense for Children International – Palestine has reported, approximately 500 to 700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system every year. Israel remains the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecute children in military courts. According to child rights groups, these children are often interrogated without the presence of a parent or lawyer, subjecting them to physical and psychological torture.
Bottom line? Abducting and imprisoning civilians – whether by militant groups or militarized states – is an immoral act. But as we do this moral calculus, we must also make sure to include an honest power analysis. Israel’s imprisonment of Palestinians in administrative detention – not to mention their imprisonment of 2.2 million Gazans in an open-air prison – occurs in the context of a heavily militarized state who have been subjecting the Palestinian people to systemic oppression and dispossession for decades. Hamas’ abduction of hostages – brutal and heinous as it was – occurred in response to a colonial, apartheid regime that been governing their lives for the past 75 years.
This is key: while Netanyahu would like us to believe that Hamas are Amalekites who have abducted hostages out of sheer evil, these acts were ultimately carried out in order to gain some leverage in amidst a never-ending blockade that has left them completely at Israel’s mercy. Such has always been the case with these hostage crises: underlying the terrifying violence of these acts lie a desire for strategic leverage in potential negotiations.
When it comes to understanding the strategic realities involved in hostage negotiations, there are few Israelis with more experience than Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization. According to Baskin, who was instrumental in procuring the release of the abducted Israeli solider Gilad Shalit in 2011 and has had relationships with Hamas leaders over the years, the current situation is considerably more complex than the one he faced back twelve years ago. As Baskin has pointed out, Israel has never had to face such a massive number of civilians taken hostage. Things are further complicated by the fact that the hostages seem to be held by multiple groups in addition to Hamas, Moreover, he says:
We’re in the midst of a war with an enormous bombing campaign going on in Gaza, destroying much of the Gaza Strip. More than a million Gazans are homeless already. So there’s a horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza as well, with so many innocent people being killed.
Baskin added that while the safe return of the hostages is the number one priority of their family members, “it’s not necessarily the number one priority of Israel. There are other priorities, like dismantling Hamas’s ability to ever attack Israel again and threaten Israel.” In other words, Israel is more interested in the destruction of Hamas than ensuring the welfare of anyone who happens to be in Gaza at the moment. At the end of the day, the hard fact remains: Israel cannot destroy Hamas without killing scores of Palestinians – and likely many hostages as well.
This, in short, is why it is so profoundly problematic to counter the demand for a ceasefire with a demand to release the hostages first. As long as Israel rains bombs mercilessly on Gaza, the chances of getting the hostages back alive grow that much dimmer. At the same time, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Hamas will release the hostages without a ceasefire. The hostages are the only realistic leverage Hamas has at this moment. And Hamas most certainly knows if they hand over the hostages before a ceasefire is negotiated, Israel will almost certainly press on with its massive military assault until Hamas is completely destroyed – along with much of Gaza.
On both a moral and strategic level, if we want to save the lives of Israelis as well as Palestinians, we simply must put all our efforts into a demand for a ceasefire now. As ever, there is no military solution to this crisis. There are only two alternatives: engagement or annihilation. While the former now feels more remote than ever, the latter is simply unthinkable.
I’ll end now with the powerful, heartfelt, urgent words of Gershon Baskin:
My heart bleeds for all of the innocent people of Gaza who have been killed, many of them buried alive under the thousands of homes that have been destroyed by Israeli bombs. War crimes are being committed by Israel in Gaza. Killing innocent people is not “collateral damage.” We are talking about the lives of thousands of people who are victims of this conflict as well, regardless of their political opinions or their views on Hamas. If they are non-combatants, they are innocent victims. The indiscriminate bombings have to end. There will be a day after tomorrow when this war ends. There will still be two peoples living on this land and we will either look back at the horrors of what we have done to each other, or we will begin to look forward. These events are the biggest traumas for Israelis since the Holocaust and for the Palestinians since the Nakba. We will not forget. This will be the new chapters in our collective memories and narratives. The question is will we stand up from the ashes and from the pains and finally realize that everyone living between the River and the Sea must have the same right to the same rights or we will continue to say that only my side has the rights to express our collective identity on this Land?
Shalom Rav 