An Open Letter to Naomi Klein

Hey Naomi, 

We don’t know each other, but we have the same alma mater (U of T) and we’re both Canadian Jews. We also have both touched on, in our own work in some ways, the impact of the ritualization of historical trauma for Israel and the Jewish people — like you did in this week’s Guardian “article.” But that article reminded me a bit of someone else from our alma mater. Remember the Jewish student who wrote her MA thesis on the March of the Living and the March of Remembrance and Hope in 2009 or 2010, which had almost no actual academic work, and instead was a treatise about the use of the Holocaust narrative to “justify” “ethnic cleansing and racism.” See, I remember her so well because I was writing my MA at the time on the March of the Living as well — but here was the central difference. While I talked about the use of history, ritual and embodiment and the educational impacts it has — often negative — I didn’t then extrapolate that to say that Israel and the Jews used it to justify a supposed agenda that lives rent-free in the minds of people incapable of understanding historical complexity. But she did. And when she was (rightly) taken town a few pegs or two and her advisors got in significant amounts of trouble for rubber-stamping an ideological rant masquerading as a Masters Thesis, I admit, I was pleased. 

And then your letter was published yesterday and I was brought right back to reading that “MA thesis” rant and wondering how people who write about the ‘insidious’ nature of the Jewish community’s “weaponization of history and trauma” fail to understand the way in which they weaponize it themselves. Like you. 

There are many things wrong with what you said, but to start with, let’s be clear that I agree with you on the profound failures of Bibi’s government in the year leading up to October 7th as well as on that day. Our agreement ends there though. See, you say that Israel — and by extension the Jewish community in the Diaspora who supports it — uses trauma as a “weapon of war.” But throughout your article, you cherry-pick historical facts, savagely attack Israel, and constantly demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state by ignoring context when inconvenient to you. An interesting position considering how frequently you invoke the “context” to frame the October 7th attacks as anything other than terrorism and murder. An invocation that no doubt played a role in your decision to publish this just before the anniversary itself, just in case anyone be tempted to let people grieve and mourn for the loss of their friends, family and sense of security. 

Trauma and the Historical Narrative 

For starters, most Israelis do not regard Israel as an “unblemished and eternally innocent nation.” I don’t know any country or people who wrestles more with itself, what it means to be Zionist, what it means to be Jewish, how to navigate the tension between being a Jewish and democratic state, and what it means to be part of the Middle East. Constantly. Do you remember the year-long protests that happened in response to the Judicial reform? Do you know the sheer amount of organizations with different visions of what Zionism, peace and Judaism mean? 

You are deeply critical of the way in which the memory of the day has been captured, arguing that events like the Nova Festival exhibit are gruesome reminders intended to, as you say, “limit sympathy for the Palestinians.” That is quite the accusation. A fundamental problem with this conclusion, however, is the very real denial of the atrocities that happened right away. Almost immediately, the burden of proof shifted to Israelis to prove what actually happened did. Across social media and the world, people with platforms were arguing that only IDF soldiers were killed, that the IDF “killed their own” to “justify a genocide”, that there were no rapes or civilian destruction, or that it didn’t even happen at all. This, despite the fact that Hamas videoed themselves committing atrocities and uploaded it to the internet, so that people could watch as their friends, families and neighbours were murdered in cold blood. Indeed, the actual head of the Sexual Assault centre at the University of Alberta argued that the rapes and sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas was “unverified” — an interesting position for a woman whose position is rooted in the knowledge that most rapes and sexual assaults cannot be verified separately, hence the position that one “believes women.” 

When considered thus, the rationale for the Israeli need to preserve and document the history of the event has a very different underpinning than your spurious accusations. 

The Weaponization of History 

You also argue that Israel deliberately interfuses the events of October 7th with the Holocaust and frames the attack as part of a broader war on the West in order to justify the war and win Western support. Unfortunately, you then proceeded to ignore any of the context of that. Your point is clear: Israel is treating Hamas as if they are Nazis and therefore can justify the “mass murder” of some thousands of Palestinians. But you conveniently ignore some critical facts. The origins of Palestinian radicalism are found in the spectre of the Grand Mufti, the Palestinian leader who supported the Nazis, moved to Germany, and advocated for the mass-murder of all Jews (see my instagram account for more of the history of this guy). During the war, there was a pro-Nazi pogrom in Baghdad, a city that was once one-third Jewish. In 1948, in 1967 and 1973, Arab armies invaded Israel, intent on its destruction, ringing loud with promises to “sweep the Jews into the sea” and to “finish what Hitler started.” Since the outbreak of war, Holocaust memorials across Europe have been comprehensively trashed. Anne Frank’s statue in Amsterdam has been defaced constantly. Indeed, a daycare bearing her name changed it in October 2023 to make the immigrant community “feel more comfortable.” Pray tell, what does Anne Frank have to do with the war? She has nothing to do with it. And yet the inversion of Holocaust memory and memorialization is abundant and weaponized against us. Do you not think that the connection to the Holocaust is made plain by others? 

All of this is made even more problematic by the fact that all of these organizations attacking Israel currently are acting in the name of destruction. They are not arguing, like many Israelis and Jews around the world do, for the creation of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution. They are intent on the destruction of Israel and the genocide of all Jews (for evidence, see the Hamas charter, Hezbollah charter, Fatah/ PLO charter, or literally anything the Ayatollah has ever said). When the Islamic Republic of Iran came into being in 1979, it came onto the scene with one primary goal: the destruction of the State of Israel. When Haniyeh was killed in Iran, it was after he attended a session of Parliament where the parliamentarians came together to shout for the “death of Israel.” Iran has been feverishly working towards the creation of a Nuclear bomb for decades, with one obvious target: Israel. In an effort to argue that the State of Israel uses its history of genocide to justify an agenda, you curiously pay little attention to the contemporary threats of destruction. 

Lastly, in your effort to prove that they are appealing for Western support by framing this as part of a greater attack on Western values, I find it curious that you ignore the role of anti-Western actors in the perpetration of this conflict. Iran, Russia, China and North Korea have in no way tried to hide their alliance, and their simultaneous territorial ambitions. The destruction and incorporation of Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel are on the top of this second Cold War. The fact that in the days and weeks after October 7th, Iranian, Russian, Chinese and North Korean bots began working overtime to distribute extensive antizionist propaganda underpins the reality of the situation — that is part of a broader conflict. Then again, as your husband is a shill for Al Jazeera, the mouthpiece of anti-Western journalism, perhaps you come by this ignorance and willful blindness honestly.

Continuation of the War 

You also, much like other antizionists, ignore the actions and agency of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran in the conduct and continuation of the war. In decrying Israel’s war in Lebanon, you act as if the 9000+ rockets that Hezbollah has sent into Israel beginning on 8 October 2023 to now did not happen. You describe the people who have died in this awful war as people “killed by Israel” and ignore the realities on the ground: the complexity of the tunnels, the difficulty of rooting out Hamas in such tight quarters, Egypt’s continual refusal to aid Palestinians seeking to flee to safety, the way Hamas embeds itself in civilian infrastructure. In fact, you also treat the IDF and Israel as if it is responding to one moment in time: as if October 7th happened and 12 months later, Israel is still fighting a war based on that day alone. When you ignore the continual rockets from Hamas into Israel, the continuation of fighting, the taking of hostages, the ballistic missiles from Iran, you remove the very necessary context. It is a war that is being fought, and that Hamas continues to fight. For all of your demonization of Israel against the helpless Palestinians, you are curiously willing to remove Hamas’ agency.

Much like others, you take a complicated situation down and distill it into one that is morally simple; but to do that, you remove all historical and contemporary complexity. When you summon a history of trauma & Israel’s continuation of a war that is at this point existential, and ignore the agency and actions of all the countries and actors that want Israel destroyed in an attempt to prove that this war is illegitimate, you simply cast Israel as the sole reason for its own enemies. Much like many others before you, you play on antisemitic tropes as a way of justifying your own position, knowing that they score the emotional points you’re interested in scoring. Perhaps I should be unsurprised by this ideological screed disguised as a legitimate article: after all, your husband argued that Al Jazeera was a bastion of accurate investigative  journalism in a 2009 article that I initially thought was a prank. Apparently you come by this ignorance honestly. And you fail to recognize that in your zeal to blame Israel of weaponizing its own history, you are just as guilty of weaponizing your own ideology as you accuse them of being. 

And, to use your constant refrain: as a Jew, I would prefer that you base your arguments in history and fact and not just participate in the wide-scale demonization, delegitimization and application of double-standards that is familiar in this conflict. Assuming of course, that you know any of the history or facts at all.