On Understanding How We Got Here and Where We Will Go - 5/12/2024

Hello everyone, thank you for being here today. Today marks the 218th day of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. According to official death tolls, there have now been over 35,000 people murdered in Gaza, close to 80,000 are injured and 8,000 are missing In the West Bank, where military and settler violence is rampant, the IOF and settlers have killed close to 500 people, injured close to 5,000 and have stolen and destroyed so much land. 

One of the things that has been so stuck in my mind this week is the idea of humanity. Over the past 218 days, we have really seen people at their best and their absolute worst. I am heartened to see the ways that people are acting in immense solidarity with one another. Coalitions are being built in order to fight for Palestinian liberation - when you look at college campus protests, or even protests here in Rhode Island, it is clear that there are so many people who may not be directly linked to the horrors in Gaza, and are still using every lever of power that they can to end this violence. We see our liberatory fights as connected and show up for one another.

In the media coming out of Palestine, you are also seeing all the ways that Palestinians are acting out of goodness and resilience, something that is not new. I often find myself thinking of people who are entertaining children, or trying to hold makeshift classes, or are taking care and feeding one another despite the loss, danger and sisyphean hurdles that the IOF and US have set upon Gaza. This is what it means to be a person - to want to care for the people around you, to fight with others to survive and one day thrive. 

Meanwhile, this week has been another brutal demonstration of all of the worst parts of humanity. We are seeing incredible violence in Palestine in addition to the ongoing assault on Rafah. Israelis set fire to UNRWA offices and videos have come out from Sde Teiman, where the IOF set up a concentration camp.Israeli soldiers have bragged about how many neighborhoods and families they have destroyed. It is hard for me to understand how people can have such evil instincts and feel called to act in such violent ways.

I am trying to understand what it takes to be able to justify such evil. How does a soul become so corrupted? This is a question I think many of us have grappled with at some point, and one that has taken up a great deal of my mental space since October 7th. Especially as I have watched family, friends and people I once respected, holding views, making statements and committing acts that are impossible for me to understand. 

I tend to be a really intellectual person. I like to study philosophy and text and try to understand how someone can come to a conclusion and figure out how I can work to change their mind. Afterall, as a Jewish person who once held Zionist beliefs and who is related to and previously in community with many Zionists, it feels like I am the best person to make these people see the all of the many ways they are wrong and try to have them turn back toward humanity because, deep in me is this idea that people can change.   

In Judaism, we talk about the inclination for good - yezter ha tov- and the inclination for evil - yetzer ha ra. It is understood that we all have these inclinations inside of us and that we all have the ability to take actions that shift us from one of these sides to the other.

There is also a communal responsibility and accountability in this work of balancing our inclinations. And in Jewish law, it is on each of us to call out injustice and try to get people to act differently. This week, synagogues around the world read a part of the Torah that gives us the commandment to rebuke or scold people when they are doing something wrong. In the various layers of interpretation around it, a rabbi from about 2000 years ago makes an addendum to this rule. Yes, we have to rebuke those who are wrong, but we should not scold someone who will not listen at all to us. We are not meant to waste the energy or incur hatred for trying to get someone to think differently who will never change their mind. 

This both makes sense to me personally, and leaves me with questions. I was raised in a Zionist household and spent 20 years believing that Jews needed to dominate so-called Israel for my safety. Fortunately, there were people in my life who challenged me. They gave me books to read, podcasts to listen to and helped me see that I was deeply misled. I was not scolded per say, but people in my life were very real with me about the fact that I was mistaking Zionism with what it actually means to create Jewish safety. I am a bit ashamed of the past versions of myself who believed the propaganda, and I also am proud of the fact that I, and others, have shed Zionist propaganda to fight alongside Palestinians and others for a free Palestine.

But on the other hand, how does someone come back from committing genocide, from propping up the narratives of dehumanization that have directly led to the mass murder of Palestinians? Do I think that my cousin, who talks about how he enjoyed going into Hebron to harass Palestinians with his gun, can ever become something other than a terrorist? He is also someone who certainly murdered people in Gaza. In the family group chat a few weeks ago, he complained that he couldn’t sleep because the mortar team was too loud. My first instinct was to write back that he never deserved to sleep again. I didn’t. I made the decision a long time ago that there will never be  any world where he can be rebuked. I do not honestly know if he deserves the opportunity to be scolded or make any kind of amends for the violence he has committed.

But what about less extreme examples - I know my parents donate to AIPAC and the ADL and have likely increased those donations in the past 7 months. They have conveyed the fact that they are ashamed of me for my anti-Zionism and do not want to hear about how I spend my time these days. They have said that they do not want me to talk about Palestine. Not how I spent two weeks there last year, not the books I am reading or the organizing that I do. What is that boundary around scolding them? How do we decide that someone can be brought into moral consciousness around Palestinian liberation? And thinking more globally, how do we actually deal with the evil that cannot change or be changed.  I do not have an answer to this, and I do not know that searching through philosophical text will ever give me an answer or any kind of internal clarity. 

While I often try to end these teachings on a hopeful note, that feels hard to do right now. I am scared. I am scared for Palestine and what the Israeli and US governments will do or not do in the coming days, weeks and months. I am also scared by what feels like a breakdown in humanity. I am scared of the people who look at what is happening in Palestine and feel that it is somehow deserved. How do we live side-by-side with them? How do we share our states, cities and even households with people who co-sign genocide? I fear that further societal separation will only drive us all into a fascist nightmare. Today I am doing the extremely Jewish thing of asking questions. I do not have answers as to how we come back from this - how we can demand people to do better when their sense of right and wrong has been so thoroughly degraded.