Progressives are failing the Jewish community
The last few weeks have been a horror show.
Two weeks ago, 1,400 Israelis and other members of the international community were butchered and worse by the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas. It was the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. People were raped while their partners were forced to watch. Elderly people and children were beheaded. Pregnant women had their wombs cut open and their babies ripped out. Whole families were butchered in their homes. And over 200 people, including dozens of children and elderly folks were taken captive.
Then, kidnapping victims and the bodies of the dead were paraded through the streets of Gaza to jeering, spitting crowds in a sick show of barbarism.
Following this brutal attack, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Semitism worldwide. London has seen a 1,350% rise in anti-Semitic incidents. Anti-Semitism is running even more rampant than usual on college campuses. Synagogues have been attacked in Germany, Spain, and Tunisia.
The response of much of the world has been disgust and solidarity with Israel and Jews — but not all of it. The initial act of unspeakable evil and terror by Hamas was celebrated by pockets of the progressive community in the U.S. and Europe. Students on college campuses throughout the U.S. published formal letters blaming the violent attacks on the Israeli “colonizers.” Others paid lip service to the attacks—”yes, attacks on civilians are bad”—before immediately launching into why this was actually the fault of Israeli occupiers. Still more doubted that these attacks had even happened despite Hamas live-streaming much of the carnage. Rallies purporting support for Palestinians around the globe have included calls for violence against Jews, including calls for genocide both straight up (“gas the Jews”) and disguised as a chant for freedom (“from the river to the sea”).
Never mind the fact that Jews themselves are actually Indigenous to the land of Israel and this conflict has been going on for decades longer than most people without ties to the region have actually been paying attention.
Never mind that Israelis forcibly removed their own civilians from Gaza in 2005 and gave the Palestinians full control of the territory (only to see them elect Hamas and repurpose infrastructure left by Israel to make weapons).
Never mind the fact that virtually every past ceasefire brokered by the international community was broken by Hamas whose founding charter calls for a genocide of Jews.
In fairness, some progressive actors — I see you, Katie Porter — did stand with Jewish and Israeli communities in strongly condemning the attacks and asserting Israel’s right to defend herself. What’s more, responses to the violence and hate from centrist Democrats like President Biden — who condemned rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and pledged support to Israel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — was extremely strong and deeply appreciated by the Jewish and Israeli communities.
However, I — and many other Jews who have stood shoulder to shoulder with progressive activists on issues from workers rights, to reproductive justice, to immigration reform, to Black liberation, to LGBTQ equality and beyond — feel betrayed by how the progressive community has (or rather, hasn’t) supported us in this moment.
Many of them are so caught up in the — very real —pain Palestinian civilians are experiencing, they are completely ignoring the broader context of the situation and as well as the simultaneous threat to their Jewish brothers and sisters. What I don’t understand is why they can’t advocate for the future of Palestinians while also supporting the Jewish community. We should be able to do both.
Now, before I continue, I want to make a few things explicitly clear so people understand where I’m coming from: Criticism of the Israeli government is not automatically anti-Semitism. The settlement and occupation of the West Bank must end. Palestinians are not Hamas. The loss of the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is tragic. Collective punishment is never okay. We must find a way to get humanitarian aid into Gaza without it falling into the hands of Hamas, because conditions for the people of Gaza are beyond horrible.
Yet you can agree with all of those statement and still recognize that Hamas is largely responsible for what is happening right now.
For those unfamiliar, Hamas is a terrorist group that follows a perversion of Islamic ideology similar to that practiced by ISIS. Their founding charter calls for a genocide of Jews in Israel and beyond. They crush dissent with unflinching violence, ruthlessly oppress members of the LGTBQ community, deny women human rights, and have no qualms using civilians as human shields.
After Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Hamas smashed any chance of peace when they were elected and instead of trying to build a society that could live side by side with Israel in peace, immediately set about devising ways to kill Israeli civilians, even digging up water pipes to make rockets.
They launched the brutal attack that started this conflict. They haven’t released the more than 200 hostages they took, a group that includes children and elderly people. They are intentionally embedding their strongholds, ammunition, and rocket launch points in peoples’ homes, hospitals, and refugee sites (which is a war crime, by the way). They are setting up roadblocks to prevent Gazan civilians from fleeing an active war zone.
Israel has dropped more bombs on Hamas targets in Gaza in the last two weeks than there have been civilian casualties — do people really think they’re missing or incompetent? Not to be morbid, but if what they wanted was a wholesale slaughter and genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza as many progressives are claiming, they would have done it already.
Again, this isn’t to negate or ignore the very real pain and suffering in Gaza. Because the situation there is heartbreaking and like nothing living beings should have to experience. If you can donate to an organization that is providing aid like Doctors Without Borders, you should.
But this context is crucial to understanding what is going on. People are accusing Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing when it’s clear they’re doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties.
What’s more, this struggle is existential for Israelis, and, by extension, Jews who have historically been persecuted in virtually every country we’ve lived in. Israel — a land Jews are Indigenous to — is the first place in thousands of years our people have been able to rely on as a safe haven. And one only has to look around, or, you know, talk to members of the Jewish community to see how the generational trauma we’ve collectively experienced has been reopened like a gaping wound as anti-Semitism surges worldwide.
This is largely because of the propaganda being spun by Hamas and amplified by the strange allied coalition of fundamentalist Muslims and progressive activists.
There was no better example of this than last week following an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. I watched in real time as progressive activists posted horrific footage of the aftermath of the explosion and uncritically parroted Hamas’s claim that the Israelis had intentionally bombed a hospital. “See, the Israelis are monsters, they’re deliberately targeting civilians and refugees” they said — fanning the flames of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment, contributing to riots around the globe.
And now that it’s been verified by multiple governments and independent journalists that the explosion was actually caused by a failed rocket launched at Israeli civilians by a group allied with Hamas? Silence.
Silence too, at the fact that since the October 7th attack Hamas and allies have continued lobbing rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities, and have hit an Israeli hospital multiple times.
I’ll say it again: Synagogues are being attacked; Publicly identifiable Jews are being harassed in broad daylight and their homes being marked for persecution; Social media sites are spreading anti-Semitism and hatred like a perverse virus.
What is happening around the globe is not just people being critical of Israel and its policies. It’s also an excuse for anti-Semitism to rear its ugly head.
Instead of standing in solidarity with us, many of our progressive allies are either nowhere to be found or are actively making the problem worse. They unthinkingly broadcast talking points from Hamas and its nation-state backer Iran. They claim solidarity by tokening Jews from fringe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace that represents a fraction of a fraction of the Jewish community. They forget all the blood of innocents that was spilled just two weeks ago in an unprovoked attack of unspeakable terror. They demand a ceasefire that will not liberate Gaza from Hamas, free hostages, or prevent us from being right back here in a few months when Hamas inevitably breaks yet another unstable cessation of violence.
Will Hamas being rooted out by the Israeli military solve this conflict? No. But it’s a step in the right direction.
To truly have peace, we need leaders of both people to be willing to reach a peaceful outcome. Hamas will never allow that (nor will the Netanyahu led Israeli government for that matter, but Israel is a democracy where it’s possible to have new leadership without bloodshed).
I will continue to criticize Netanyahu and awful policies in the West Bank. I will continue to support the Palestinian’s right to self-determination. I will mourn the deaths of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. But what I won’t do is call on my friends and family in Israel to lay down and allow themselves to be murdered by their neighbors.
Here at home, I will continue to stand by my progressive values and join my progressive allies to fight for justice in other arenas because I don’t do this work for a transactional reward. But it’s disheartening to the extreme to see many so-called “progressives” abandoning the broader Jewish community in our time of need.
In all my time as a progressive activist, I’ve always worried if my Jewishness would one day become a problem for my progressive allies. That if I wasn’t a “good Jew” with the approved political viewpoints there would be problems. Despite anti-Semitism being the world’s oldest form of bigotry, many in the progressive world see me as ‘just another white person.’ It’s true, I present as white and benefit from white privilege — and you better believe I use that to my advantage when advocating for others. But a quick look at the events of the past two weeks should have any level-headed observer realizing that Jews are a minority in desperate need of solidarity from other impacted communities.
Admirably, progressives have one of the strongest lenses for standing with impacted communities and opposing bigotry. And yet when it comes to people who are ethnically and culturally Jewish, that resolve seems to disappear. It’s a blind spot that’s been around for years, and if they still can’t see it now, I’m not sure they ever will.
Progressives not supporting the Jewish community right now—and no, this doesn’t mean they can’t also support the Palestinian community, this isn’t a binary — are not living their purported values and should be ashamed of themselves. This attitude is a sign of corrosive rot deep within progressive circles, and it’s going to take some serious soul-searching and drastic changes in behaviour to root it out.
