The Other Side

I have a dear and wise friend Susi, one of those people who embraces everyone she meets with arms wide open and is never shy about dousing the whole gaggle with affection and concern. She would take on the problems of the world if asked to, but I am lucky enough to be one of those whose problems she takes on just because I was grabbed by her gravitational pull when our boys became buddies in grade school.

Yesterday we met at a kitschy neighborhood Tex-Mex watering hole called the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, where she reminded me, as we munched on guac and chips and listened to Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that not all of my readers know I have denounced Hamas and expressed compassion for those murdered and taken hostage on October 7th.

Her implication seemed to be that by revealing this fact, I might prevent more crazies from attacking me and fend off bizarre LinkedIn replies like the one I recently received from a former co-worker who passive-aggressively accused me of being an antisemite in response to a polite IM offering to help her find someone to fill a job opening she'd posted. Because that's totally sane. And that it might also reassure my Jewish friends that I am not unsympathetic to them.

Support and Condemnation

In fact, I posted repeatedly on Facebook in the days and weeks and months after that gruesome day to express my shock and horror over what had happened, along with pleas to bring the hostages home. I shared this video from the Wall Street Journal, an account from an Israeli woman who survived the attack on the Kfar Aza kibbutz, and added the caption "heartbreaking." I posted a video of the Israeli Opera singing "Hear My Prayer" from Les Miserables in Hebrew (and I pretty much despise Broadway musicals, so that took some effort on my part).

When Jews first began to feel threatened at Columbia University, I posted this video of a professor there taking on the pro-Palestine protesters and I praised her courage for doing so. When the four most recent hostages were rescued, I made it known on social media that I was relieved and happy for them while also condemning the indefensible slaughter that had made that rescue possible

Pushing Back, Leaning In

I admit that I stayed silent when Zionist feminists tried to bully me into "believing the women" who were supposedly violently raped on October 7th, because something about those accounts never added up for me, and it seems as if my instincts were right. It's painful to think how many innocent people may have died because of what appears to have been a hoax perpetrated by the Israeli government and it's just as painful to see how many smart but ideologically blinded people fell for that propaganda.

I also watched many of the heartrending videos posted by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is just about my son's age and who somehow survived the October 7th attack despite having his left arm blown off by a grenade that was thrown into the shelter where he was hiding from the terrorists. I admired her resolve and ached for her with each passing day represented by a number pinned to her chest. I was especially moved by this Passover video she posted and shared it with Susi, who is Jewish. I learned something about the religion of my ancestors in addition to learning a bit more about how this mother continues to cope. I was thrilled when it was announced Hersh was still alive.

The Problem with Zionism

But none of this changes my view of how Israel is conducting the war in Gaza, which is that It amounts to genocide, a view shared by a number of leading genocide scholars who also happen to be Jewish, including Raz Segal, Omar Bartov and Amos Goldberg. Or that Zionism is a failed experiment, a cancer that has metastasized and is eating its host, as any modern state that commits genocide eventually does. Adam Shatz puts it best in his recent essay for the London Review of Books entitled "The Descent of Israel" It's a long but extremely smart, thoughtful and well-argued piece that gives some context for the current crisis as well as a blunt assessment of what Zionism has become. I recommend reading it. Here's one tiny bit that resonated profoundly for me:

Israel’s supporters might argue that [what Is happening in Gaza right now] is not the Shoah, but the belief that the best way of honouring the memory of those who died in Auschwitz is to condone the mass killing of Palestinians so that Israeli Jews can feel safe again is one of the great moral perversions of our time.

Am I a monster to endorse this way of thinking? According to the hundreds of people who went after me for saying so, including a former member of Congress, my former employer and at least one former real-life friend and one former Facebook friend (you'll note there are lots of formers in my life right now), yes. To their mind, one can't criticize Zionism without being an antisemite as absurd as this may be. How does expressing outrage over what will likely be at least 200,000 and perhaps up to a million dead civilians when all is said and done, including through ongoing famine, and demanding accountability for that massacre make me anything but a human being?

I don't know. I sense the rage and criticism have to do with the deep shame that at least some of those who call themselves Jews feel when confronted with the undeniable fact that they are committing or endorsing the very atrocity that led to the creation of the Jewish state, right down to concentration camps where prisoners are being tortured, raped and killed, a state whose leaders justify the mass killing of children and whose official media accounts claim "there are no innocent civilians" in Gaza. I couldn't say. What I can say is that I reject the accusations that have been hurled against me. And now that you know my views—all of them, including my views about Hamas, October 7th, the hostages and the allegations of systematic rape committed that day—you are welcome to make your own judgments about me and decide for yourself whether I deserve to be silenced and threatened.

*Update: On June 12, 2024 the UN released the findings of its investigation into this matter. Despite the fact that Israel vigorously impeded and obstructed that investigation, the report concluded that "the Commission did not find credible evidence that militants received orders to commit sexual violence."