I am sorry, one Jew and one Muslim, because of the war
Israel, Palestine, and the War in Gaza: Why Israel and the Palestinians cried out for Israel in the wake of a Gaza airstrike
I went to bed on Tuesday night assuming, as many people did, that an Israeli airstrike killed at least 500 people in the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. That’s what the Gaza Health Ministry claimed, and those claims made headlines in leading news outlets, including this one. Politicians denounced what they said were Israeli war crimes. Social media lit up with anguished howls of grief and rage. Furious protests erupted throughout the Middle East. A historic synagogue in Tunisia was reportedly set alight, and a synagogue was firebombed in Berlin. The leaders of Jordan and Egypt canceled a meeting with President Biden, where they would have discussed aid to Gaza.
In much of the world, there will be no dissuading people from holding Israel, and by extension America, liable for the hospital bombing. Israel will be able to use this episode to distract attention from its violence towards the Palestinians. Jews, whatever their views about Zionism, will be placed in greater danger. As this hideous war grinds on, there will almost certainly be other enormities. We will compound the horrors if we’re sure that they’re real.
The deadliest attack on Jews in the country’s history happened that year when a Hamas suicide bomber killed 30 people at a Passover Seder in the city of Netanya. As part of its response, Israeli Defense Forces invaded the West Bank city of Jenin, leveling dozens of refugee camp buildings. The Palestinians said that Israel had massacred hundreds of people, while the official told CNN that 500 people had been killed. People all over the world believed these reports; as a BBC headline put it, “Jenin ‘massacre evidence growing.’”
Still, cracks have begun to emerge among the Democratic coalition. Younger and more liberal voters remain more focused on the Palestinian cause than older generations, a split that emerged in the last two decades and accelerated during the Trump administration. Among them are many American Jews who are far more critical of Israel than their forebears and have flocked to groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace, which staged a protest in the U.S. Capitol calling for a cease-fire and has repeatedly accused Israel of planning genocide in Gaza.
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, a well-known progressive activist who frequently criticizes the Israeli government, described from her pulpit her horror and feelings of loneliness. The message from a large number of people around the globe was that the victims of Israeli military action deserved a terrible fate.
As the Hamas attacks continued, leaders of the New Israel Fund, which supports progressive Israeli and Palestinian groups, were besieged with calls from American supporters who demanded they label Israel an “apartheid state.”
It was progressive groups who responded immediately to the killing of Israeli civilians by moving to try to justify their actions on social media.
And many protests have included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that leaves no place for the state of Israel to exist in its own land.
Dehumanizing Israel: When you dehumanize the group, you are the enemy!” says Los Angeles City Activist Eric Spiegelman during a recent protest against Israel
Nick Melvoin is running for Congress and says his generation has been warned how quickly people will turn on him and he just thought no way. “Now we see, this is how that happens: When you dehumanize the group. A lot of us have been warned about this stuff and it has hit us like bricks.
The most rattling episodes have occurred on college campuses or on social media, where statements from small organizations have been amplified across the globe. During a global conflict, those statements have become totemic, heightening fears that they are going to change the standing of Jews in America.
Eric Spiegelman, a lawyer and podcast producer in Los Angeles who has serves on municipal boards, was enraged by the protest in New York City promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America after the attack. He sent hundreds of letters to Los Angeles city officials, begging them to label the organization a hate group. The D.S.A. has since backed away from the protest and apologized “for not making our values explicit.”
“It’s like, I belong to this political organization that believes in three things: affordable housing, raising the minimum wage, and the wholesale murder of Jews,” said Mr. Spiegelman, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he condemned local leaders who are affiliated with the group. It is two out of three.
“We need to remember that anyone dehumanizing Israelis rightly has zero representation in the United States government, while many federal officials have been dehumanizing Palestinians for decades,” Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, said in an interview.
BE’ERI – To walk the streets of the small village of Be’eri in southern Israel nowadays is to relive the horrors from the single deadliest attack on civilians in Israel’s 75-year history.
The streets of this once close-knit community are now lined with partially destroyed homes. Some were blown open, others burned. Inside one are blood-splattered walls. In another, two childrens’ rooms are filled with books, binders, stuffed animals and paint supplies. The mattresses lay in white bed frames and are stained with blood.
The road leading into this kibbutz leads to the bodies of the Hamas operatives who massacred the community three miles from the border with Gaza.
The Israeli military has been leading journalists through this village in recent days to give the world a glimpse of what happened once Hamas militants crossed the border from Gaza into Israel undetected, storming several communities where they killed at least 1400 people and took some 200 hostages.
People hid in safe rooms waiting for Israeli forces to arrive. No one came for hours. When it was finally over and they emerged, the scene was unlike anything they’d ever seen before.
More than a week since the Hamas attack, which set off a war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza where the group is based, survivors are still waiting to identify bodies and plan funerals
“We’re still trying to figure out how we’ll deal with so many funerals,” Alom told Morning Edition. “We do not know where to bury them because it is not safe.”
He said that for more than four or five hours, they were slaughtered, and no one came to help them. I don’t know whose fault it is but I just know we’ve been slaughtered.”
How Palestinians feel: Noykatsman, a peace activist, and a prophet with Israel’s enemy, Gabrielle, God’s strength
Their anger is not yet aimed so much at the government for its intelligence failure or Israeli forces for their delayed rescues, but toward the Palestinian enclave.
It’s being crushed by a relentless wave of Israeli airstrikes, choked by a complete siege that’s barred food, fuel, electricity and water from entering, and is bracing for Israel’s ground invasion, all aimed at ridding the territory of Hamas.
Noykatsman said they want the war to stop, while sitting in a Jerusalem cafe. They know Alom’s pain, but they use it differently.
Hayim was killed in the village of Holit a mile from Gaza. Hayim was killed in the attack when he hid in a closet.
Hayim was a peace activist in the past. He wrote a PhD about the dangers of the right wing in Israel and was critical of the government for encouraging illegal settlements.
That’s why Katsman believes their brother, despite his tragic killing, “would say we should never kill innocent people” and would encourage Israelis to re-think the long-term repercussions of retaliation.
“My government, instead of saying, ‘Okay, we failed, maybe we need to do something else,’ they’re saying, ‘Oh, we need to kill more Palestinians. We need to now destroy Hamas,” said Katsman. These are the people who gain from violence and hate, and it is right-wing politicians who get power from it. But we lose from it.”
They said you need a basic understanding of how people feel. “And if after they kill us, a thousand people, we are going to kill three thousand of them, that’s not an understanding of people, because these people will grow up and hate us even more.”
They said that Israelis only care if something is pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel. “This question is a distraction. People die. People die from both sides.
Aziza Hasan, a devout Muslim, looked out at the group gathered around her, spoke of the loved ones who had died in Israel and Gaza and began reciting the first chapter of the Quran.
“On my right side is Gabrielle, God’s strength,” she told the crowd, translating the song. Raphael is the God’s healer. Above my head is God’s divine presence.”
The War between Israel and Hamas in a Park with Two Jews and Two Muslims During the Second Israeli-Mexican War
A war was going on between Israel and Hamas in the middle of the afternoon, with Ms. Hasan and Mr. Hodos sitting on the grass at the park. A circle of Jews and Muslims surrounded them.
The group was part of NewGround, a nonprofit fellowship program that has helped more than 500 Muslims and Jews learn to listen, disagree, and sympathize with one another.
