One of my favorite parts of seeing the J. land in my mailbox is how it showcases the richness and diversity of the Bay Area Jewish community. It’s something I’ve always loved about Israel, as well.
Yet something about Emma Pearlman’s Feb. 23 op-ed “Gazans deserve normal lives, just like you and I do” struck a nerve, and it encapsulated precisely why so many Israelis, Jewish Americans and friends of Israel feel isolated and alone in this moment and likewise fear for the future.
Emma’s 2003 experience in Rafah sounds delightful — and not all that different from life on a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza where communities are close-knit and life’s moments are celebrated and mourned together.
Yet in failing to acknowledge what started the current war — Hamas’ brutal surprise attack, its organized sexual violence and its kidnapping spree that abruptly ended an actual cease-fire — those who call for a cease-fire give the impression that Israel woke up one day and decided to launch its largest military offensive in memory.
When I speak to those who express outrage at Israel, they consistently cite Hamas’ notoriously inflated casualty statistics without acknowledging that roughly 12,000 of the dead are Hamas terrorists, according to a Feb. 19 report from the Israel Defense Forces. Noting combatant-to-civilian ratios obviously doesn’t take away from the tragedy of civilians killed, but it does put the war into a context that can be more thoroughly understood, assessed and compared with other situations of urban warfare.
Those same voices cite the brutality of Israel’s occupation of Gaza without noting that Israel voluntarily evacuated every single Israeli and Jew from Gaza in 2005. Often deeper in these critiques are Israel’s maritime limits and border controls on Gaza, which supposedly constitute occupation. But facts are a tricky thing, even if they are omitted: Maritime blockades are governed by the laws of war (not the laws of occupation), and Gaza has a border with Egypt with zero Israeli oversight or control. To say that Israel occupies Gaza is to argue that the United States occupies Canada because the American government controls its side of the border and the flow of people and goods.
There’s nothing more Israeli (or Jewish) to debate about what is the right course of action in Gaza and in confronting Hamas. There’s also nothing more Israeli (or Jewish) about disagreeing with those we love. We are a people bound together by a shared history, ritual practice and common destiny — with disagreement woven into our DNA. Yet as a community, we must forcefully call out those who shout slogans and accusations against Israel with selective information — so selective, in fact, that they offer oxygen to those whose real goal is the destruction of Israel as the Jewish homeland.
How can I state something so controversial with such certainty? Because the same voices that use a selective telling of the facts also consistently omit what Hamas’ leaders continue to tell us: that Oct. 7 was just the beginning and that they will perpetrate many more Oct. 7-style massacres as soon as they can.
If the tragedy of Oct. 7 taught us nothing more, it’s that we should believe the words of our enemies. Ignoring those words — or stringing them together in a selective way — will only exacerbate our collective sense of isolation and fear and will not lead to the peace and dignity that Israelis and Palestinians both deserve.