10-23-23
I learned of the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed by Hamas with much sadness, and feel great empathy for the families that lost loved ones, as a Jew who has worked on a Kibbutz and a humanThe Peace and Justice Center believes that violence creates a spiral that destroys our world and brings suffering to all eventually.
Also as a Jew, I feel great responsibility to tell the rest of the story. I grew up in a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors and vowed to never remain silent in the midst of a genocide. I don’t approve of the 75 years of ethnic cleansing and apartheid that has brought us to this sad day, nor do I approve of the vengeful acts against helpless civilians, half of whom are children, in Gaza that are ongoing: no water, no food, no electricity, bombardment of schools, hospitals and houses of worship, and no medical facilities to take injured children to.
Israel portrays this as a war against Hamas, but most do not know that Hamas was actually supported at its inception by Israel in an attempt to create a fundamentalist Islamic enemy for the secular Palestinian liberation movement, like the US did with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Few also know that despite all the implausible commotion about how unprepared Israel was for the attack, Israel admits that it was warned about the attack by Egypt and other sources. The right wing government of Israel’s strategy is clearly to eventually annex Gaza and the West Bank occupied territories. What stops them from doing so is the “demographic problem”. In other words, there are enough Palestinians in total to outvote Jewish Israelis. So Israel is trying hard to reduce the Palestinian population by making their lives unlivable in the occupied territories, by expulsion, by violence. Although we will probably never know for sure, it’s not hard to imagine this government cynically allowing the October 7 security breach in order to create the pretext for emptying Gaza of its 2 million plus Palestinians.
For now, we must advocate for a ceasefire to prevent genocide, and a prohibition on US military aid to Israel . Subsequently, the blockade must be ended and the apartheid conditions must end. One major obstacle to this is the outsized power of the Israel lobby in US politics, where groups like AIPAC massively fund primary challenges to any legislators who speak out for Palestinian rights. Israel’s policies do not make Israelis safer. A negotiated settlement is the only path to safety.
Jeffrey Gottesman