Just about a week ago, militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, with a bombing that killed just under a thousand civilians at a music festival. I don’t have to link to a source; you’ve probably heard well about it already. My theory is that this is a late response to the Israeli Offensive Force’s bombings of a refugee camp in Jenin, Palestine earlier this July. There were countless civilian deaths and no international outcry against this. Meanwhile, my father’s theory is that Israeli forces knew about the attack, and let it happen so Netanyahu could swoop in and “save” Israel in its time of need, thus tugging up his sinking approval numbers.
I try not to consider a lot of what my father rants about these days, but I hate that I keep thinking about that. It’s not the first time a government – let alone one sponsored by the USA – has sacrificed the lives of innocent civilians so someone could win a popularity contest.
All mainstream American news outlets claim this is an attack by Palestine – not just Hamas, and especially not without further context. As far as most of America knows, the entirety of Palestine just rolled through the streets like the tenth plague. I had gone over to my parents’ house to visit, and instead found my father propped up in front of the television, watching CNN; the newscasters crowed about “the Jewish state of Israel” so frequently that it became alarming.
Modern Israel does not speak for Jewish people everywhere, especially not myself. Those of us in the Diaspora – basically, everywhere else in the world – are in a weird place of knowing the territory has only been named as of 1948, and that it’s now supposed to be out homeland; our home base. Many of us are deeply unnerved by that sentiment. My late grandmother was in middle school when Israel was carved out of Palestine. In fact, the British Empire annexed Israel’s part of Palestine only about 100 years ago. A lot of us Jews feel disconnected with this Modern Israel, as I call it. It is not the same Israel in our prayers and songs. It is an unidentifiable beast wearing the skin of our Israel, one that calls for us to come join it – come home. It looms in the distance, unavoidable and too terrible to look away from.
What the hell did we learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Did we not spend months enthusiastically reminding each other not to call it a “war” and to use Ukrainian pronunciations of names and places? Why has that suddenly gone out the window with the further invasion of Palestine? It all feels so purposeful by the American mass media that we’re calling it an attack by a whole country against an ethnocultural group of peoples. I was about to say, “Imagine if someone called an attack on America ‘an attack on all Christians’,” but I was immediately reminded of Post-9/11 American propaganda. This feels strange. How deeply have these things been ingrained in North American culture?
Anti-Israel talk of the last 20 years has been so corroded by drooling internet neo-nazis that it’s now impossible to lay out basic facts without prefacing, “Now, I like Jewish people, and…” Back in 2014, when Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip were particularly covered by international news, I couldn’t even wear a Magen David to campus without someone asking me if I was a Zionist. Now in 2023, I begun to brace myself for the backlash against Jews when Israel inevitably began attacking Palestinians, and then…it didn’t come. American and European media started crowing about how this was an attack on all Jews. Maybe they knew they could play off the collective guilt of goyim from supporting blatant anti-Semites despite our warnings (i.e. the Trump junta, Alex Jones, J.K. Rowling, etc.) over the years.
“I’m sorry about my past actions!” They yell, grabbing their bandoliers and pitchforks. “I want to take this opportunity to make it up to you!” And thus, no one questions the Palestinian genocide, as it is masqueraded by mass news media as Another Scary Arab Nation trying to destroy Jew Valhalla. It feels insidious.
American Evangelicalism has stolen so much from Judaism – our shofars, scriptures, even some of our own (into converts) – that many Evangelical Christians see Israel as their own second home, a fun vacation spot to go see where Jesus once walked down the street. (Side note: Yeshua ben-Yosef was historically a Jewish Palestinian.) In fact, Evangelicals believe that if they can cram all of my people into Israel territory, it’ll trigger the end of the world and we’ll all get to play Foosball in heaven. The American Republicans grin and bear supporting Jews because Israel gives them an American outpost in the Middle East. The US/EU are not flooding support to Israel out of any genuine love for us Jews; they see us as sad wet sacks who need a homeland. I know some of us may feel lost, and latch onto Israel for this reason, but remember: this Modern Israel is not for us. It is a beast that hates us for not falling for its camouflage.
I hate how Palestine is being destroyed over something so stupid. I hate how thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians have been wiped out, murdered, by a slow rolling wave of colonial violence so American fundies will have cheap hotels to stay in. A beautiful, intricate culture with countless significant places and items, destroyed, wiped from popular memory. This is genocide. I am a Jew who swore “never again”, and yet, here are my own people endorsing another wave of death.
Maybe this truly is the end of the world. I’m not the first person to say this feels like a beginning of the end…a terrible beast with blood-soaked fangs crawls across the final stretches of the Holy Land, eager to turn every inch it can get into condominiums and tourist stops. The symbolism is so obvious, but it feels cheap to say. My people have little to do with Jesus, but Yeshua ben-Yosef was one of us, and did he not fight back when he saw a temple overrun by vendors and hooligans? Have our people not been through enough injustice to know what it looks like before our very eyes?
Defending Palestine should no longer come with an immediate assumption of anti-Semitism. I’m willing to bet there’s countless Israeli citizens who feel the same way anti-Zionists do: deeply ashamed, and unable to reel in this beast of colonialism, and the only way they’ll know they’re not alone among the roaring masses of Messianic nationalists if if we in the Diaspora put our collective foot down: Palestine needs the world’s support, not Israel. Sure, it sounds scary to hear how Hamas is funded by Iran, but they wouldn’t exist in the first place if it weren’t for the cultural genocide of Palestine. Moreover, Israel is entirely bankrolled by the American government – they’ll escape this crisis just fine. That is, until the next time innocent Israeli civilians are made to die horribly so their deaths may be used as propaganda for an apartheid state. It’s sickening, but by doing what we can right now, wherever we are, we can change the course of history.
It is hard to find online how to say “long live Palestine” in Hebrew, but I found it: תחי פלסטין, techi Palestine. It is a nation that fights to stay alive, even after being ravaged by two empires, the British and the American…and for that, I’ll always regard Palestinians as being some of the bravest people ever born. There are people in the outside world who are fighting to see a free Palestine one day, and as one of these people, I swear we will never forget about you.
decolonizepalestine: A database of information about Palestine’s history and apartheid propaganda
UK citizens can email their MP asking for a ceasefire
US citizens can call/email their local government officials asking for a ceasefire
Donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
The Gonzo Brigadoon 
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