This is a political post about current events. If you don’t like reading them, feel free to skip over. I try to avoid getting dragged into debates about Israel/Palestine/Gaza online, on Facebook and so forth. Facebook seems to be the village square of our time, from where all ugly squabbles generate, and while I’m not immune, I try not to get involved (not always successfully) but much more so since Sarah died.
I think American Jews my age have a complicated relationship with Israel, almost a love/hate relationship. Speaking only for myself, I can’t stand Israel’s policies and practices toward Palestinians, the apartheid, its expansionist occupation, if you will. I do believe Israel has a right to exist and I can’t unravel the threads of history and who has a better claim to the land. I don’t have any history with Israel, no relatives there, and I’ve never visited. Jews my age are too old for those Birthright trips that were started for teenagers and that kids seem to go on now as a matter of course.
I have friends on social media who post ardently pro-Palestian messages and friends who post pro-Israeli messages. I’ve abstained from “liking” either one. But last night something really got to me, and I dived into the fray. Maybe foolishly. A friend from college copied and posted a long screed against Hamas with the notion that ceasefire was up to Palestine, not Israel. No reactions to the post for several days. Then suddenly another friend from college jumped in and posted a very angry response. I can’t copy the response because he has subsequently blocked all of us as friends. It said something like “This is just propaganda! IDF soldiers have killed 15,000 Palestinian children. We Jews are guilty! The Talmud calls upon we Jews to atone on Yom Kippur for “being zealous in pursuit of a bad act.”
To the best of my knowledge, the friend (ex-friend) who posted this is not actually Jewish. He’s a gay man who has always stepped up and kind of role-played for other oppressed groups. For instance, I remember once when we were in college together and it was Passover and the cafeteria had not served any Matzoh, he offered to go speak to the cafeteria manager with me about it. (I was quite soft spoken then.) I remember that he told the cafeteria manager “We really need the Matzoh in order to celebrate our holiday.” It felt good that he was taking on the mantle of Judaism in my support. I can see him doing that for other oppressed groups as well. He’s a terrific person. And fun too. When we were in college, he started something called “The Gumball Religion.” We were all devotees. It involved, to the best of my recollection, going to the gumball machine in the Student Center and praying for certain colors of gumballs.
I have not seen him since graduation, but I’m sure he’s out there, empathetic and fun, and his heart is always in the right place. But with regard to this post, I responded that I felt he was being anti-semitic. That I didn’t understand why all Jews needed to atone for the bad acts of Israel or the IDF. In my opinion, his placing the blame on all Jews was the essence of anti-semitism. That if I had something to atone for, please let me know what it was. I feel so much guilt for the death of my own child. I really don’t want to have to take on the deaths of 15,000 other children.
I understand that all Americans fund Israel, and perhaps should atone for that, but Jim was singling out Jews to atone, and aside from this post, Jews in America are starting to feel like we are being blamed for the actions of IDF. But many of us don’t support those actions at all. Many of us, like me, desperately want Israel’s actions to stop. If a kind, sensitive person like Jim can make that mistake, what are actual bigots thinking?
I go to bed very early these days, and I’m not sure what happened after my post. Whether angry words were spoken and nasty posts exchanged. When I got up, Jim had unfriended all of us. That’s sad.
The First Year Without Sarah 