The thing that I'm still really scared to talk about

I’ve gotten really really good at leaning head-on into uncomfortable conversations about race. But what I’m about to write scares the pants off of me. It’s something so fraught in my community that it’s something that we just don’t talk about, unless we know how the other person feels. And even then, we probably still don’t talk about it.

I’m pretty sure that whatever I write here won’t satisfy anyone, on either side. It might make a lot of people pretty mad.

But what I know is that, if I’m worth anything as an (aspiring) anti-racist, I need to talk about this.

As a Canadian-American Jew, I grew up hearing that Israel was ‘the good guy’.

I think the Israeli national anthem is beautiful.

I read the book Exodus by Leon Uris and I cheered for the Jewish ‘Freedom Fighters’ who fought against the Palestinian ‘Terrorists’ to make Israel a state. I feel in love with the strength, bravery and vision of the Jewish people who were fighting for their homeland. For what felt like the first time, I felt like my people weren’t the underdogs, we weren’t the weaklings.

I thought it was pretty cool that there would be a place for Jewish people to go where they’d feel safe. Like they belonged. (I still feel this way, just not in the way it actually played out historically and continues to play out.)

Then I went to Israel for a 2-month summer program when I was 17. After attending an elitist, private Christian school for over 10 years, and always feeling like an outsider (no, I do not want to sign up to give my body to Jesus), I loved that everywhere I went in Israel, everyone I met was Jewish. Our taxi drivers. The servers at the restaurants. All my classmates. My teachers. Here was a place where I belonged, just for being me.

What I also acutely realized on that summer program, back in 1994, was that I was being indoctrinated.

The Israeli ‘Freedom Fighters’ vs the Palestinian/Arab ‘Terrorists’ didn’t sit well with me, and I started to wonder what the other side of the story looked like. What was being kept from me?

Over and over again, throughout my life and reaching a peak during my time in Israel, I was told that Jewish people took a desert and turned it into a thriving democracy, with green lawns and state-of-the-art technology and military. Before the Jewish people came and ‘rescued’ that land, it was just being wandered by Palestinians who weren’t doing anything with it.

I was literally taught that 1 Israeli life was worth many more Palestinian lives. Maybe not in those exact words, but also maybe in those exact words.

From that trip forward, I felt stuck between two worlds. I was Jewish, and proud of it, but I wasn’t ‘pro-Israel’ like I was expected to be.

I was told not to listen or donate to NPR, because they were anti-Israeli and too left-wing. I saw people I love voting on one issue: Israel.

I saw the human rights violations that were being committed against Palestinian people, but people I loved and cared about continued to say things like ‘they use their own children as shields to fight against the Israelis’. (While the Israeli government does things like cut off water to Gaza, recently bombed the only COVID testing site in Gaza, and systematically treat Palestinians as less than human.) This sounds to me just like people saying, when yet another Black person is murdered at the hands of the police, that the police were somehow justified if the Black person in question deviated in any way from some unknown, unreachable standard of perfection. Still not an excuse for using lethal force on that person. That human being. That body. That life.

In case you are missing my point, the Israeli government is the white supremacist in this scenario.

But it’s somehow seen as different, because we see ourselves as the persecuted ones. We’re the good guys. We’re the democracy amongst the Arab nations that are culturally so different from us, and that are so easy for us to fear and blame. Israel couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong. This is the rhetoric I heard over and over again.

So I kept quiet.

When/if I’d bring it up with friends and family, I’d be met with defensiveness or denial. And because I didn’t know ‘all the facts’, it was easy for me to feel like I had it wrong, or for them to out-argue me.

So I kept keeping quiet.

I distanced myself from my religion. How could my people who have been so persecuted, so ‘othered’ for so long, be so blind to what’s going on, to how the Israeli government mistreats human beings who aren’t like them? How can they not understand that we are all interconnected, and that we are not truly free until all oppression ends?

My (overly simplified) belief is that it’s trauma. When people are persecuted long enough, they start to identify with the oppressor, because that’s where the power is. That’s where it feels safer.

But that doesn’t make it ok.

I am Jewish. I am not religious. I connect with the suffering of my ancestors, and of my people in general. And I am appalled at the treatment of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government. I am saddened by the way that many of my fellow Jewish people, and many others in our country, insist that Israel could never be at fault.

I am also saddened that anyone who speaks up is accused of being anti-Semitic, including progressive law makers and social justice advocates (such as the Black Lives Matter organization).

And, at the same time, I also still feel a bit defensive when people trash the entire existence of Israel. That cord is still there, and I must acknowledge it. But I will no longer stay silent.

Here’s what I know:

-Whatever justification people have for the creation of Israel does not justify the way the Israeli government, to this day, systematically dehumanizes and harms Palestinian people. The Holocaust, in all of its terror and darkness, does not excuse this behavior.

-Generational trauma can make people act in unpredictable and often ugly ways, and the way through this conflict is healing trauma, rather than creating more of it.

-Being opposed to apartheid in Israel does not make someone an anti-Semite (although that’s what the religious right would like us to believe, because it takes the heat off of them).

-Being opposed to apartheid in Israel does not make me an anti-Semite, nor does it make me a ‘bad Jew’.

-Blindly supporting Israel, blindly supporting right-wing politicians who support Israel, and blindly opposing any left-wing politicians who do not support Israel is near-sighted and naïve. The religious right does not prioritize the safety or rights of Jewish people.

Americans proclaiming that they are anti-racist and care about Black lives, without acknowledging the atrocities committed against Palestinian people by the Israeli government (largely made possible by American support) is hypocritical. Human lives are human lives.

I am complicit in all of this, and I’m still on my own journey. Decades of indoctrination, from any source, can be challenging to undo. I am learning and trying to be better.

If you read this and find yourself judging me or wanting to defend your own opinions about Israel, I invite you to pause, ask yourself why you are getting reactive and what belief system are you holding onto. And maybe, just maybe, keep your mind open to learning something new, a way forward that involves healing and interconnectedness, rather than perpetuating trauma.