A rabbi for over 20 years
Israel Should Not Be Shunned
Recently, I attended a gathering at a Unitarian Church in my community of Riverside, CA to support the Muslim community after the shooting that occurred at a mosque in San Diego, CA this past May. I walked in to find a display table sponsored by “Riverside for Palestine.” The organization was raising money to provide food for Gaza. I happily contributed and got to talking with one of the women from the organization. I told her that I had spent a few days last fall providing “protective presence” for Palestinian farmers who were having trouble reaching their olive trees during harvest season because of harassment by Jewish settlers. This woman was intrigued and said she would like to have coffee with me to talk further. I met her at a local café.
She appeared wearing a large keffiyeh and I thought: “She does not know who I am and will be surprised.” Indeed, as we spoke, it dawned on her that, yes, I stand up for Palestinians but, yes, I am also a Zionist, meaning I believe in the right of self-determination for Jews in our homeland. She was experiencing cognitive dissonance: How could I care about Palestinians but, at the same time, be an evil Zionist?
She expressed her views as follows. “What is going on in Gaza is worse than Auschwitz” (I had mentioned that my mother was actually in Auschwitz); that “the government of Israel is worse than the Nazis”; that she had no interest in reading the Jewish side of the story or even engaging in serious conversation. She also suggested I watch a “documentary” entitled “Palestine 1936” about the Palestinian uprising against the British from 1936 to 1939. I took a look at the trailer, which began by stating that the Jews were sent by the British to colonize Palestine and to oppress the Palestinians in 1947. I asked her if she knew that the UN, in partitioning the land of Palestine that year, offered the Palestinians a state but they rejected it. “I would have rejected it as well,” she said. “It’s like saying do you want to be raped this way or that way? ‘”
Now I am no fan of Bibi Netanyahu, nor of Israel’s current right-wing government. But the current Left narrative about Israel, filled with lies, and the vilifying of the state are, in my opinion, pure antisemitism. I just returned from a two-week trip to Israel, where I spent several days on the West Bank. And yes, awful things are being done to the Palestinians in the West Bank. (I did not go to Gaza.)
I traveled with T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, as well as with Breaking the Silence, Rabbis for Human Rights and Torat Tzedek. I saw what military occupation means for the Palestinians living in the West Bank and what settler violence has wrought. Closed military roads, presumably for the safety of the settlers, block Palestinians from access to their land, and in some cases, to their animals and even, in one case, to their toilets. Random detentions and arrests keep Palestinians off balance.
Settlers known as “hilltop youth” block children from attending school; barge into homes at all hours of the night to harass and beat up Palestinians; sheep and even camels are brought to graze on Palestinian land so that there is no feed for Palestinian animals. We saw evidence of bulldozed homes and discovered that archaeology is being used to displace Palestinians as well.
In the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem, for example, Palestinian homes are currently set for destruction to make room for “King David’s Garden,” though no evidence exists to support the claim that there was ever such a garden in that specific location. The idea is to make life so unacceptable that Palestinians will leave and new Jewish settlements will flourish.
I was and am appalled and ashamed that this is being done by Jews and in my name. This has absolutely got to stop. My hope is that, come the election in late October, a new, more humane government will be voted in with respect for Palestinian lives and property. But what the critics of Israel miss in this story is the work of the human rights organizations I mentioned above. These are Israeli Jews fighting to bring justice to the Palestinians. Not every Israeli is a violent settler. We should be supporting these groups rather than keeping them out of our coalitions.
And there is the other side of the coin: The real fear Israelis are experiencing ever since the brutal attack by Hamas on October 7th, 2023.
I also traveled to the Gaza Envelope – visiting the kibbutzim that were massacred on October 7th. I was amazed at the commitment these people have to rebuilding their communities and to renewing the lives that were so incredibly devastated. And they are doing so while filled with dread that another attack could happen at any time. This is something the critics of Israel seem to forget: the incredible trauma Israelis are still experiencing three years after the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Surely they deserve some empathy for what they have gone through and are still experiencing. Surely they deserve the right to defend themselves after 1,200 were killed, after women were brutally raped, and after 250 were taken captive into dark, dank tunnels. Surely they too should be able to hold onto their land.
The story is a complicated one and cannot be reduced to good guys and villains, to a black and white story with no nuance. So yes, the military Occupation in the West Bank must end. And yes, Israel is slipping away from being a democracy with rights for all. But so is the United States. And many other countries for that matter. But does that mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Israel was founded as a democracy. I challenge the notion that it is a settler-colonial enterprise. We were there long ago. As one anti-Israel advocate proclaimed at a City Council meeting a couple of years ago: “Jesus was a Palestinian.” Indeed, and Jesus was a Jew, proving that we did not just arrive in the 20th century to colonize a foreign land. And as for the British sending us to Palestine to do so: the fact is, the British strictly limited our ability to emigrate to Israel. They did not send us to conquer the land. Like other countries, Israel has made, and is making, serious mistakes. But why is it the only country to be sanctioned internationally ever since its founding? Could that be because Jews with power offend the sensibility of antisemites?