American Jewry as Netanyahu’s mob is accused of genocide for aid denial in Gaza

The murderer brought the intifada to DC, blaming American Jews for the Israeli government’s exiling Gazan children from life. The murdered, Yaron Lischinsky, an Argentinian Christian with an Israeli father and Midwest American Jew, Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were murdered in a place where American Jewish people feel safe.

The DC/Baltimore/Northern Virginia area has 600,000 Jewish people living here. I believe it is the fifth largest concentration of the world’s fifteen million Jews. I, myself, live in this are and it is one of the places where I have felt most welcome as a Jew. But that is part of the point of globalizing the intifada, to make sure that Jews nowhere feel safe.

Beyond this horror, ask anyone with sympathies for the murderer a utilitarian question. How does this murder help Gaza’s civilians? Ironically, the murdered were peace activists working with both Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

The murderer blamed all Jews for the Netanyahu gang policies. Many Jews, most notably Israeli ones, blame Hamas for all Palestinian death. Ironically, the citizens of both Gaza and Israel want to stop the war, but are ignored by their governments. Why?

Both the Netanayahu coalition and Hamas governments are in a fight for their literal existence. Each tethered to similar authoritarian narratives, claiming that if they fail then the societies they are defending will fall.  These governments are patrimonial.

Patrimonial leadership doesn’t distinguish between itself and the country the leadership serves. Both Hamas and the Netanyahu coalition run their countries like they own them. They see their countries as part of their body instead of seeing themselves as part of a larger polity. They are not governing for the citizenry, instead working their personal wants and desires—identifying their personal interests with those of the country. Both groups claim only they are able to secure security for their citizens while ironically making both worlds insecure. Authoritarians use the same language.

There’s no question Hamas wants all Israeli Jews dead or gone and that Netanyahu’s mob wants the same for Gaza’s Palestinians. Hamas says the Jews can’t be there, not even in a shared state. We all know from recent Israeli government statements that they would like to expel the Palestinians from Gaza. Hamas is imminently genocidal and scholars are now debating if the Netanyahu group is as well. Most say they are.

How does denying Gazan children food help Israel’s security needs? Is criticizing Israel for this now considered antisemitism?  International law identifies the occupier as responsible for getting aid to all under its occupation. If aid doesn’t get there, it is the occupier’s fault. Logistically and tragically, Hamas often steals the incoming aid for its fighters as well as to ensure control of all things in Gaza. Authoritarians, like Hamas, are always at war with their population, continually negotiating who is in and out, sacred and profane. The sacred of the moment alone have the privilege of getting food and the profane of the day are denied necessities, like food to eat. Getting food is a privilege given by authoritarians. If a member of the wrong clan is distributing aid, Hamas will deny that clan food. Israel at one time was trying to use the (tribal) clans in Gaza to distribute aid. Hamas didn’t allow this. Why would they? It would be self-defeating. Death is their game.

Hamas may bear blame, and I blame it for much, but as said, under international law, it remains Israel’s legal responsibility to ensure aid gets to those needing it. The Netanyahu gang’s failure to do this has again triggered discussions of genocide. Scholars and legal experts are uniting around identifying it as such. To see why, here is a link to the genocide convention, a term coined by legal fighter and Jewish hero, Rafael Lemkin.

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf)

This may strike those who follow this matter closely as odd, but many American Jews don’t know how authoritarian and out of step Netanyahu’s crew is with the Israeli populace. Ordinary American Jews understanding of Israel is antiquated, eclipsing what the Netanyahu government is doing. Busy lives and domestic concerns perhaps eclipse us from paying more attention to Israel’s multi decade growing theocratic authoritarianism. Likewise, many American Gen X and baby boomer Jews live in post holocaust narratives that celebrate Israeli Jews as more Jewish.

It also seems like the majority of American Jews have forgotten that Netanyahu supported and exploited the permission structure far right Israeli Jews used in the 1990’s to portray former labor leader and PM Yitzhak Rabin as a Nazi. They were trying to kill the peace process between Israel and the PLO, who represented the Palestinians in negotiations at the time. Identifying Prime Minister Rabin, not as a political opponent, but as an enemy of the state who was alleged to be little different from Nazis informed a far right Jewish activist to assassinate Rabin at a peace rally on November 4th, 1995.

The average American Jew doesn’t have much awareness of the changed moral direction Israel started to take after Rabin’s murder. https://youtu.be/AgVZ0hq8_8Y?si=lr2XhAzW8q_XgD9a

Ehud Barak, Israel’s last labor Prime Minister, did not have Rabin’s political charisma to sustain and grow what Rabin started. At the same time, Hamas, just like the religious right in Israel, wanted to derail the peace negotiations, the Oslo Accords. Hamas introduced suicide bombings, blowing up Israelis at clubs, restaurants, busses bussing kids to school and more. Netanyahu’s minions continued to frighten Israeli Jews that labor is trading away Israel, doing what Nazis would do, destroy it.

Netanayahu has claimed in every election he has competed that only he can keep Israel secure. This myth died on 10/7/2023. His claim that he was responsible for Israel’s great standing in the world was also killed in this war. His government has lost the confidence of thousands of reservists. Israeli news report over 100,000 reservists have refused to serve in this war. Israeli paper Ha’aretz reports some reservists are preparing another open letter. https://apple.news/AuHqmZv3iT2i_CskxpL7joQ This type of information is found in Israeli media, but not so much in American media.

Along with our media ignoring demographic shifts in Israel and the American Jewish vacation from antisemitism provided by gentile holocaust guilt along with our desire to integrate as Americans perhaps plays a role in our not seeing or understanding historical political changes in Israel, not to mention, our easy lives contributed to ignoring the history of Jewhatred. It was not a concern in our daily lives.

Life was generally free of Jewhatred, so we thought. Sadly, most Jews I meet have little ability to explain the history and embedding of anti-Judaism in western civilizations literature, schools, religions and more.

Meanwhile, while supporting and raising money for Israel’s war effort, many American Jews’ Gen Z children came home from college angry, pushing back on American Jewish historical understandings of Israel, protesting the majority standpoint that Israel is an inclusive democracy.

We generally don’t talk about the many Jewish protestors sojourning at Columbia University last year in Jewish circles. I had no problem with them protesting. I support civil disobedience. I did have problems with the Jewhatred propagated by some non-Jews. Further, I did and do have a problem with the anti-war protesting Jewish students’ underwhelming condemnation of Jewhatred in their midst. The protesters inability to exercise nuance on this shows a failing on our part in educating them about antisemitism.

The Hamas goal was and still is to trigger a murderous storm against Israeli Jews, and perhaps all Jews. A Hamas rallying cry, “The intifada is global,” provides a permission structure to attack Jews anywhere any time. We saw this the other day in DC. A challenge we American Jews face is not confusing warranted fears of Hamas’ Jew hating genocidal goals acutely realized on October 7th with justifying Israeli atrocities against Gaza Palestinians.

The hatred fueling the conflict often reduces the warring groups to cartoons without nuance. Such reductions muddle much of the ethics most of us claim to live by. We must stop exiling our ability to speak with those we oppose. How unAmerican. The US ideally is a country where political discussion never ceases. Our democratic discussions commands and direct engaged disagreement. Real disagreement means understanding your opponents positions. There is still space here for such discussion.

Meanwhile, many American Gen Z Jews are changing the American Jewish historical discussion about Israel. These young adults and their GenX/baby boomer parents and grandparents are not having mere arguments about Israel, but shouting, door slamming, leaving home fights in which the young are winning. Parents will not lose their children over this.

These young Jewish American adults are starting to turn the tide of American Jewry’s deferential approach to all things Israel. Their Judaism isn’t inspired by Israel as was the Judaism of their Gen X parents and their baby boomer grandparents. The Holocaust is ancient history for some of them, as long ago as the civil war is to GenX and baby boomers. This perception of the holocaust having little direction for us today betrays another Jewish educational failure.

A number of Gen Z Jewish students in my classes, but not all, are often deeply critical of Israel, kind of seeing Israeli Jews as first cousins once removed or second cousins, but resent being categorized with them as immediate family. Ironically, Netanyahu’s crew is helping these Gen Z American Jews voice themselves as American Jews with Jewish pride while exercising a critical orientation toward Netanyahu’s Israel, the only Israeli PM they have experienced. They tell me their embrace of Judaism informs their critical posture.

Meanwhile, MAGA and the right wing Heritage Foundation’s Christian Esther project identify such Gen Z Jews as self-loathing. Right wing American Christians obsess on Jews and Israel, continuing a two thousand year old Christian fetish picking us apart. The mentioned students from my classes do not question Israel’s existence. However, their politics regarding Israel do not bode well for Israel’s long term relationship with the US.

Netanyahu speaking as the voice for all American Jews has never been appreciated by many American Jews. GenZers standing apart from Israel do not believe he speaks for American Jewry. No Israeli government does. What happens if this alienation from it continues to grow in young adult American Jewish communities?

Netanayahu’s solution is his continued embrace of the theocratic Christian American right undermining American democratic norms. They worship Netanayahu’s cage fighting bro approach to political enemies. Many like him more than the President. Oddly, not to mention strategically shortsighted, many Israeli Jews do not take American Jews or American Jewish concerns seriously. Those of us who critically question Israeli policies toward Palestinians are often told to keep our ignorance to ourselves. We are not perceived as realistic and strong like Israelis, but as naive idealists, weaklings like the tailor Motl Kamzoil in Fiddler on the Roof. We are not cage fighting bros like the Netanyahu crew.

Finally, we American Jews need to be louder in our support for Israelis against Netanyahu’s gangsterism as well as holding our other Israeli cousins accountable for supporting the mass atrocities directed by the Netanyahu regime. Deferring to Netanyahu and crew is not what world Jewry needs to secure our future. World Jewry needs American Jews to use their voices to help stop Netanyahu’s terror. He is no more a savior than was Sabbatai Zevi, the 17th century false Jewish messiah who led tens of thousands of Jews into an identity crisis. We must not lose sight of the hungry face of the stranger. If we do, who are we?