A Note on Israel-Palestine

On October 7th, I cried all day. I cried for the Israeli victims, and I cried for what I knew would be the future Gazan victims of an asymmetrical war that risked turning into a genocide.

That was my first week at my current job. I cried every day, reading the news, as the death toll in Gaza mounted

I am a Jew. A secular Jew, humanist, atheist, but a Jew nonetheless.

I have never been to Israel-Palestine. Here is why:

When I was 9, my parents made me attend Hebrew School on Sundays at the Jewish Community Center. I didn't want to go and was very resistant. Didn't want to spend time with kids who made fun of me on Sundays. Didn't want to learn Hebrew.

My teacher, a young guy closer to my age than my parents', showed us a video of himself as a teen, planting trees in the desert.

"Trees in the desert."

I didn't know those trees were being planted over bulldozed Palestinian homes, but I knew Israel was a place of conflict, and no one was dying over trees. I didn't trust this Hebrew school teacher, and when I did learn about the conflict there, as a slightly older kid, my sympathies were with the Palestinians.

I refused Birthright because I didn't want to go to a country where I had more rights than someone who was born there. 

I believe in a one-state solution. A secular. pluralistic state. This is the position of most of If Now Now, the Jewish peace and anti-occupation organization I belong to. 

At least until we can have a no-state solution. That would be my ultimate preference.

I believe Jews and Arabs both have a claim and a right to the land. Government doesn't. You should be able to live anywhere you want. You shouldn't be able to enforce a government. Governments don't have rights. People do.

And people are not their governments. Hamas is a terroristic organization, and the IDF practices state terrorism. But there are civilians on both sides who only want peace and equity.

I hope for peace. I hope to visit Israel-Palestine one day. But I cannot under these circumstances. If that means I never do, then so be it. I am disgusted by Israeli Apartheid. My dad says Israel was founded by trauma victims. That may be true. They seem to have not learned from the past.

Never Again. Never Fucking Again.