Dear friends
We are living through some very dark times.
I’m still finding it entirely overwhelming to process the events of October 7th. As a human being, I am stunned and nauseous. I simply can’t relate to such depravity happening in my lifetime to my people on my homeland. As a Jew and an Israeli, the massacre and butchery reawakened the deepest traumas, which Ireally believed were a thing of the past.
Israel’s response, whilst I deem it absolutely necessary, does not make me feel any better. The thousands of dead kids in Gaza brings to mind a quote from Golda Meir, Israel’s female Prime Minister 50 years ago, ‘We can forgive them for killing our children, but we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children’.
The media’s portrayal of what is going on, makes me feel wrenched in the gut. The moral equivalency argument is pervasive. Some mainstream media have gone much further. Hamas went from terrorists to ‘militants’ and Israel a genocidal criminal. The mass protests and the slogans on the streets and universities across the world as well as statements from some international organisations like the UN, reflects the fact thatunfortunately this is in not a fringe position.
How can otherwise rational well-
The fact is that war brings misery, full stop. When it’s an urban environment, the collateral damage, the death of innocents who are not the targets, sky rockets. Israel does not wish the battle ground to be Gaza, Hamas does. Because it relies for its survival on the ignorant anti-Israel outrage
To the outrage of Jew-haters, I
To the genuinely perplexed, I would like to say the following. Your inability to categorically
Putting aside the irony involved of those saying this and living in the US, Canada, Australia, or Europe, who really are products of colonialism, if the premise is that Israel is simply evil colonialism, then everything more or less flows. The Palestinians can never be wrong and Israel can never be right. Since Israel is fundamentally illegitimate, everything done to harm this illegitimate entity is itself legitimate. As the UN chief hinted, the massacres didn’t happen in a vacuum. In other words, they are to some degree justified because Jews don’t belong there.
The only problem with such a view is that it is entirely false. Not only are Jew not aliens to the land of Israel, this week’s Parsha, Lech-Lecha, written thousands of years ago, traces our roots precisely to this land. Unlike white Australians, Americans, and Canadians, when the first Zionists came to Israel it was a people who were forced out of their land into exile and now returning. Much as the Palestinians and their supporters want the right of return to all the descendants of those who were exiled, the Zionists were exactly those descendants of original exiles.
This is not an argument of a God-given right, which I
I’m not suggesting that Israel can do no wrong. Of course there has been plenty we must ask forgiveness for. Not from Hamas, from Palestinians. And we should be working a lot harder toward a better outcome for them. But it should be on the basis of two legitimate, competing claims. Palestinians’ right to live dignified free lives, Israel to be a sovereign nation ensuring the security of its citizens and in fact Jewry worldwide.
Which should lead us all to unite against Hamas as the enemy of humanity that it is. And maybe find solutions to its eradication which does not involve Israel sitting idly by while its citizens are brutally and intentionally slaughtered.
We hope and pray for the darkness to be lifted.
Please join us tonight for Kabbalat Shabbat as we hold the space for each other in our pain and come together to sing and spread love and light in the world.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Shneur