A Personal Reflection on Israel and Gaza

I have intentionally paused my regular content in light of mass atrocities. What is happening in Gaza and Israel may feel like an ocean away to you, but it’s deeply personal to me.

My family lives in Israel--not distant relatives but my immediate family. The effects of generational trauma affect not only Israelis and Palestinians but progressive American Jews like me, for whom both the genocidal violence of Hamas against Israel and Israel's genocidal "complete siege" of Gaza are trauma triggers.

In cities across the US, hate crimes have increased against Muslim and Jewish communities. As a Jewish person and public speaker who has been targeted and threatened, this makes my every communication around these issues fraught with stress and anxiety at a time when I am struggling to process horrific murders of innocent civilians and support loved ones who are directly impacted by violence.

Israelis and Palestinians have so much more in common than many of us realize. As the brilliant Palestinian scholar Edward Said has argued, Palestinians and Israeli Jews must recognize each other’s history and authentic claims to the Land of Palestine-Israel.

Now is the moment to lead with our shared humanity. I keep returning to the words of Nicholas Kristof, "If you care about human life only in Israel or only in Gaza, then you don't actually care about human life.... If your moral compass is attuned to the suffering of only one side, your compass is broken, and so is your humanity."

#Israel #Gaza #Palestine #Hamas #trauma #jewish #antisemitism #islamophobia #humanrights #genocide