I wanted to share just briefly a bit about the mentality I’m holding each week when I write about Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East.
I’m Jewish.
I’m not breaking any news here when I say that, but I wanted to explicitly name that as part of the frame of reference from which I view world events.
By that I mean, I am deeply invested in the Jewish story, which is a subpart of the human story: the story of a particular people, initiated through the call Abram heard from Hashem to leave his father’s house and go to the land that Hashem would show him. From there his family grew until family turmoil and famine drew the family from that promised land down into Egypt—literally the narrow place—where they were oppressed for years; until finally, through a partnership between God and Israel, God and human beings as they understood it, they broke free from that oppressive moment, journeying through the wilderness on their way back to the land; a journey which included the encounter and the covenant at Sinai—a covenant which laid out sacred pathways of being in the world; responsibilities to take on as a people. Eventually making it to the land, they built a palace and a temple there—a means of governing themselves and of facilitating connectiin with God—which were in turn eventually destroyed, and the people were exiled from the place where they had laid down roots, forming new ways of cultivating holiness and connection to their story and to one another across time and space through exile, through diaspora. These themes continued throughout the generations—exile and oppression paired a response of religious and cultural creativity, and reliance on perceived connections to the Divine and to one another. In the aftermath of the most pronounced expression of that violence and oppression—the Nazi Holocaust—a Jewish state was formed in that place of their dreams and their reality. What lingers is a still imperfect balance in a still broken world of Jews and humans living in diaspora and in Israel, continuing to pursue the Jewish and human story, until we’re able to bring about an age of collective redemption.
I articulate all of this not to lay out a theological claim for the land. It rarely if ever serves human beings well to rely on theology to make political claims. I raise it simply to articulate that I feel a connection to, and invested in, this story. I don’t witness current events through some detached, objective lens—as though any of us could. We are all informed by our stories.
To me the Jewish story is one that has allowed us to make deep meaning of the world. It has given us a sense of where we come from and where we’re going, and a set of values, rituals, and milestones through which to navigate the journey—it can be a truly sacred way of living. Not the sole sacred way of living—other peoples and other individuals have formulated alternative sacred ways of being. But it is a cherished way of being; way of connecting; way of relating; that has brought—and continues—to bring about much goodness holiness.
And so when I view, and reflect on, events in Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East, this is part of the story that informs me. And it offers me a couple of teachings: (1) that we don’t disregard this story, the people that is bound by it, and its connections to the land; that they are real and to be honored and cherished; (2) that all human beings are created in the image of the Divine and that nobody’s life is worth less than anybody else’s.
Another ramification of this frame is to gauge the context for the moment and to ask, in response to that context, where are my attentions needed?
There may be moments in the future when Israel is not under the international rhetorical onslaught that it is currently under, and, to the extent Israel is carrying out injustices, it will be up to us to call them out and to seek to reform them.
Israel is, like all countries, not a place where justice is perfectly upheld. To name a gross example, Israeli vigilantes, out of a sense of rage and vengeance, seek to interrupt flows of humanitarian aid into Gaza where dire hunger has been a pronounced problem in the fallout of this war (that Israel did not initiate). Further, far-right government actors do not intervene in too many cases where Israelis terrorize Palestinians. There is much about which Israel can and should be criticized and reformed.
But as I say, sometimes it is a matter of emphasis. When much of the international community—sometimes the United States is the lone defender of Israel—is ignoring the Jewish people’s story, is ignoring the way antisemitism has often operated to lift up the Jew as the paradigmatic wrongdoer, this time highlighting Israel and Zionists as the worst form of colonialists and oppressors, to me the emphasis of those of us with connections to the Jewish people should be to highlight the parts of the story that are being missed. The fact that Israel has countries encircling it that would see to its destruction; the fact that the deadliest day in its peoples’ history is mere months in the rearview mirror, with its civilians brutally murdered and the perpetrators still at large, in control of neighboring territory, swearing to carry out such attacks again and again.
It’s not that none of Israel’s response to October 7 is worthy of criticism; it’s that the level of criticism out there in the world is so disproportionate to the context for that response—the context of multiple actors surrounding Israel, still, 76 years after its creation, actively seeking to destroy it, seeking that reached its bloodiest point on October 7, and that continues to this day on multiple fronts, from Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis and more. It’s not that I don’t pray for a pathway forward for peace for Israelis and Palestinians that redresses the harms to both peoples. I do.
It’s that, being deeply invested in the Jewish peoples’ story, being deeply invested in how we’ve gotten to where we are, I’m going to speak up, when it feels like the story is being ignored and subverted. I pray that when the shoe is on the other foot—when I feel that it is a different people’s story being ignored and subverted—I’ll have the courage to call that out, too.
