Dear Humanities students,
I know that you’re all getting a lot of information online about the current war between Hamas and Israel. I know that this information is fuelling what you think are the best arguments for someone who cares about social justice and basic human equality. These are laudable qualities in a person and should be embraced. I, too, hold human dignity, justice, and equality, as inalienable rights that should be endemic to all people everywhere. Because I believe that you are trying to fight for these things and do what you think is best by your fellow human being, I wanted to take some time to write to all of you and let you know that I believe that you are missing some crucial information. I have seen what you’re seeing on Instagram and TikTok. And I know that it is a compelling mixture of half-truths, omissions, and outright lies. I also know that you don’t want to hear that, and that you may suspect anyone who contradicts what has been broadcast to you all so loudly and continuously, of being biased. And I am biased; everyone is. That is a human quality that is unavoidable. That’s why studying the humanities is so important. Studying the humanities helps you to understand that there are always multiple narratives and everyone is biased in how they relay them because everyone brings different life experiences toward their understanding of events and ideas. While there is no such thing as pure objectivity, however, this doesn’t mean that we oughtn’t strive toward the best, most balanced way of understanding any particular idea or event. We in the humanities do this by taking all available evidence into account when we formulate our arguments. And I know that you are not getting all of the available evidence, and that the mental framework into which you are fitting what you are hearing, is a western one which sorely misunderstands the cultures under consideration.
If you do care about the state of the world, and about humanity, peace, and all that is just – and if you’re a student of the humanities and therefore know that nothing in politics, history, or life is clear-cut and black and white, but rather multi-faceted and complicated – I hope that you’ll read on.
And before you critique or outright reject what I have to say here on the basis that it is incomplete, please understand that I am well aware of its incompletion. The following is not intended in any way as a comprehensive overview of the Israel-Palestine situation. Rather, it is intended as a supplement to, and in some ways a corrective to, the information that is circulating in the media and on social media, from people who either lack a holistic perspective or who allow their biases and prejudices (or the policies of their bosses and the perception of what will sell their newspapers or get them the most hits on their social media accounts) to dictate what information they choose to make available.
The purpose of this piece is not to give you a whole history of the region, of the founding of the state of Israel, of the wars and failed peace processes, of the suffering on all sides, of corruptions in both Israeli and Palestinian governments over the past 75 years and the manipulations of other governments around the world that have all contributed to the current mess. If you’re interested in any of that, I’d be happy to answer any questions and/or point you to good sources of information online and in books. And by “good” I don’t mean that I agree with them. By “good” I mean what any professor should mean when they point you to readings; texts that make solid arguments based on solid, comprehensive evidence. You have been reading a lot of opinions, but that’s not the same thing. Scholarship is based on arguments that rest on hard evidence, and that seek to accommodate all of the evidence available, rather than only data that support a particular biased position. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between arguments and opinions, but the ability to discern that difference is what a good humanities education should provide for you.
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First, some definitions. As you all know, it is a fundamental principle of social justice movements to allow people to define themselves and their own experiences; and yet the media and pro-Palestinian organizations have been defining and explaining Judaism, Zionism, and Israel loudly and continuously for 50 days now. So here are some definitions of terms and experiences that come from those in the minority who would define themselves rather than have others do it for them.
Judaism:
Usually defined as a religion, Jews think of being Jewish rather as being a member of a community across space and time (going back 3000 years – some will say 4000, but as an historian I would say 2500-3000). Judaism is not a race (Jews are found among every race on earth), and although the basis of the shared community is often religious, many Jews identify as such without any religious affiliation or beliefs. There is also not a single Jewish culture, though there are shared cultural characteristics among many Jewish communities historically. Three things all Jewish communities across time and space share are (a) a common set of texts that inform their ideas about how to live; (b) a sense of common ancestry and history; and (c) a belief in their origin from the land of Israel and a longing to return to it.
Zionism:
Zionism is a longing for a return to Zion among Jewish people historically. Not all Jews today are Zionists, but Jews have been Zionists throughout their history; meaning that they understand their origins to have been in the ancient lands of Israel and Judea (hence “Jew”), a.k.a. “Zion,” between 2500 and 3000 years ago. Expelled from that land about 1900 years ago by the Romans, many returned soon after. Jews have lived in Israel since before there was such a thing as Christianity, or such a thing as Islam. A longing for return to Zion is in the later parts of the Hebrew Bible and the theme runs through all Jewish liturgy. Modern political Zionism began as a movement in the 19th century, as Jews came to feel betrayed by broken Enlightenment promises of acceptance and equality throughout Western Europe and were under increased persecution in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The movement advocated for a return to the place of their origins, the land of Israel, and Jews began to move back there to create a haven for themselves where they could live in full equality and be safe from persecution and massacres. The Holocaust, during which 6 million Jews were systematically executed in Europe, brought home the point to the rest of the world that the Jews needed a state of their own that would serve as a refuge from persistent Jew-hatred that has been part of the fabric of world history for as long as there have been Jews. They bought land from the Arabs who lived there and settled on it.
Zionism is not racism. In fact, if you ever travel to Israel you would see in two seconds how ludicrous that notion is. Unlike the Jews you may have met in North America, Jews in Israel reflect all the races among whom Jews have lived for the past 1900 years. Jews come in black, brown, beige, and white. There are Asian Jews, Indian Jews, and African Jews. There are also a great many Jews who lived in Arab lands for thousands of years (before they were persecuted or expelled in various stages particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, and immigrated to Israel) who look just like other Arabs. And the non-Jewish Arabs who currently live in Israel (they make up 21% of the population) are full citizens with equal rights and privileges (more on this below).
Zionism is not colonialism. Colonialism is an outgrowth of imperialism that characterizes movements over the past 500 years, particularly by empires like Britain, France, and Spain, to colonize the new lands that they discovered and displace the indigenous inhabitants. You are likely descendants of colonialist Europeans; this is why you recite land acknowledgments at the start of every meeting or public lecture. Over the past 2800 years, Jews in Israel were colonized by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantine Christians, Roman/European Christians, Arabian Muslims, African Muslims, Ottoman Muslims, and British Christians. If Jews were ever colonizers, it was thousands of years ago when they first developed as a people. The Hebrew Bible says they came from Mesopotamia and grew as a people in the promised land. The archaeology tells a different story, and since stronger evidence is on the side of archaeology, I find that argument more compelling. The archaeological evidence and the DNA evidence both point to the people of Israel actually developing out of the Canaanite peoples who lived there, who the Bible claims that they conquered. In other words, the Bible is not accurate here, and Jews are originally indigenous to ancient Canaan, later known as Israel.
The land in question was called Palestine from the Roman period until the British Mandate. It was named thus by the Romans as an insult to the Jews; when they expelled them, the Romans renamed the land after the ancient Jews’ biblical enemies, the Philistines – who were themselves Indo-European settler colonialists from the regions of Greece and Turkey.
Jews living in Israel are not settlers. Not only are they indigenous, but in 1947 the British occupiers of Palestine along with the newly formed United Nations, divided the land between Jews and Arabs (they were all called Palestinians because they all lived in British Palestine) before the British withdrew. The Jews accepted this partition plan and proclaimed a new state of Israel in 1948. The Arabs did not, and waged war on the Jews to expel them. (They had tried to do this many times during the previous century as well, not only with the Jews who had been living there for centuries, but also because many Jews were fleeing persecution and massacres in their host countries in Europe and the Middle East and had moved to Israel under the Zionist dream. This peaked during the Nazi persecutions, although the British severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine during this time.) The loss of the 1948 war came to be known as the Nakba.
Jews living today in areas designated as Palestinian, like the West Bank, are settlers. The West Bank belonged to Jordan until 1967, when another attempt at eradicating the state of Israel by surrounding Arab nations failed and Israel captured the West Bank. Under previous Jordanian rule, Palestinians in the West Bank were not entitled to Jordanian citizenship but were kept in the area known as the West Bank, with the idea that when Israel was annihilated, these refugees from the 1948 war would be able to return home. But Israel remained, and thus so did the refugee cities that had been built in the West Bank. Similarly, Palestinians living in the Gaza strip prior to 1967 were under Egyptian rule. Egypt had no interest in allowing them citizenship either, and kept them in Gaza for similar reasons. Gaza was similarly captured by Israel in the 1967 war, and when they tried to give it back to Egypt, Egypt refused to take it. Israel withdrew from Gaza completely in 2005 so that the Palestinians in Gaza could rule themselves and create the basis of a thriving, self-sustaining Palestinian state. Instead, Hamas, a government controlled by Iran, took over, appropriated billions in international aid for the creation of this state, and used it to arm themselves. They have been launching rockets on Israeli civilians continuously since 2006, and have brutally eliminated all Palestinian opposition to their totalitarian rule there.
If you’re interested in the history of the Palestinian refugees, I can refer you to some good sources. My point here is about settlers: since 1967, many religious Jews began to settle in the area of the West Bank asserting that it was their God-given right, because this area is the heart of Judea and Samaria that the Bible says God promised to Abraham and his descendants. I – along with many of my friends and colleagues in Israel – strongly disagree with the establishment of these West Bank settlements. The people who live there are settlers. The rest of Israelis, who live in Israel proper, are not.
Except: according to Hamas and its sympathizers, all Israelis are settlers, or settler-colonialists, because as far as they are concerned, the state of Israel has no right to exist. They believe that the entire region belongs to Islam and should remain exclusively Muslim. This is because the Muslims conquered it in the 7th century CE, and built a shrine and a mosque on the Temple Mount, on the site where the Jewish Temple stood from the 10th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, and then was rebuilt and stood again until the Romans destroyed it in 70 CE. Again, happy to provide more information on this history, and the evidence that makes up this historical narrative, if anyone wants it.
It is important to recognize that this is the crux of the current war. Hamas and its supporters (Iran and its proxies) believe that Israel does not have the right to exist. When they talk about “the occupation” they don’t mean the area of Gaza, or the area of the West Bank. They mean the state of Israel is being “occupied” illegally – according to them – by Jews who have established a sovereign state. That’s why when they chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” we take it as a call to eliminate the state of Israel and all the Jews (and Arabs and others – see below) who are citizens there. They want “Palestine” – as designated pre-1947 – to be “free” of Jews. And that’s why we take that as a call to kill Jews. Because that is in fact what it is.
Hamas is an Islamist organization. This means that it believes in a God-given mandate to govern all Muslims according to a fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an that requires that men rule over women, that Blacks are slaves, and that homosexuals be executed. They also seek to exterminate all Jews, and to take over the world by violent force. You don’t have to take my word for it. They have published their charters online, which you can find readily and read for yourselves.
Jews and Israel are accused of genocide. Genocide is the premeditated, planned execution of all people belonging to a particular group. For example, the Turks perpetrated a genocide on the Armenian people in 1915-18 (and it’s happening again right now in Azerbaijan). The Nazis organized a genocide of the Jewish people between 1939-1945. The people of Darfur in western Sudan have been subjected to genocide since 2003. The Hutu people of Central Africa committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994 against the Tutsis. The Serbs committed genocide against Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge in genocide of Cambodians from 1975-1979. Israel has never attempted to exterminate the Palestinians or any other group. Again, don’t take my word for it. Have a look at the population growth of Palestinians in Israeli territory compared to any other population group in the Middle East, and you’ll see that not only is there no evidence that Palestinians have been systematically murdered, but that in fact their rate of population growth is actually among the highest in the world.
Jews and Israel are accused of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is genocide against a particular ethnic group with the goal of eliminating that group from the region (or the world) that is being “cleansed.” In almost all of the cases of genocide cited above, you’ll see examples of ethnic cleansing. You could also bring in the example of Hamas’ stated mission, which is to kill Jews wherever they are found. That qualifies as ethnic cleansing. Defending the borders of one’s sovereign state from terrorist incursions is not ethnic cleansing. Nor is it genocide.
Israel is accused of being an apartheid state. The word “apartheid” comes from the South African Afrikaans language and means “separating, setting apart.” It is a legal policy that developed in white-ruled South Africa for the purpose of separating people based on their race; in that particular case, to limit the rights and freedoms of Blacks under white rule. There are just over 7 million Jews in Israel (note: this is based on a census that looks at ethnic affiliation only; i.e. this category “Jews” come in all colors and from all backgrounds, from North African to African American, from Moroccan and Yemenite to Asian and Caucasian). The other 2.5 million people who live here consist of a variety of other ethnic and religious groups, with Arabs (both Christian and Muslim) comprising about 21% of the total population. These Arabs – unlike those in the Palestinian Territories or in Gaza – are full citizens of Israel. They are part of every fabric and class of Israeli society. An Arab-led party is one of the largest parties in the Israeli parliament. They serve in the army and are part of the justice system, all the way to the Supreme Court. There is nothing “apartheid” about any of this – and to label it as such denies and whitewashes the horrific suffering of Blacks under an actual apartheid South African regime that enforced racist, discriminatory laws and segregation and deprived Black people of all rights. Israeli Arabs have the same legal rights as any other citizens in Israel. Are there problems here? Are there racial tensions? Of course. We live in a world fraught with concern about the color of people's skin and fear of those who are different from us. Look at where you live - are there problems there? Are there racial tensions? I'm willing to bet the answer is a definite yes. And just like where you live, there are good people working very hard - many devoting their entire lives - to enforce the equality for all that is guaranteed under the law of the land. (A law, by the way, that does not exist under Hamas rule in Gaza.)
In fact, when polled, 77.4% of Arab Israeli citizens claimed they would not move to a Palestinian state should one be formed. In other words, they feel that things are better for them in Israel than they would be in a self-governing Palestinian state if a 2-state solution were to be pursued. I often wonder how supporters of the “Free Palestine” movement around the world might feel about that fact.
Most of the Arab and Muslim nations in the Middle East have never fully accepted the reality of a Jewish state in their midst. According to traditional Islamic belief, the entire area belongs to Muslims. The fact that Jews were there beforehand is part of their own historical record, but for the past century or so many in the Muslim world have sought to erase that history as well; this attempt to erase Jewish history underlies a lot of what you are seeing on social media. Although many of the Muslim states do have economic alliances with Israel today and don’t actually subscribe to the radical Islamist beliefs espoused by Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, etc., they have also quietly maintained Palestinians in refugee camps (for example those that exist to this day in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan; I’m willing to bet you haven’t seen those mentioned in any of your sources). They do this to perpetuate the hope that Palestine will once again be “free” of Jews, even as they work together with the Jewish state in environmental, technological, and economic ventures in the region.
But the point is, if you think that Israel has a right to exist as a democratic Jewish state on the tiny sliver of land (check a map) that was allocated to them by the UN in the midst of vastly larger mostly theocratic Muslim states in the rest of the region, and you also believe that Palestinians should live free lives with equal rights and in basic human dignity, then you and I agree. And I want you to know that supporting Hamas, or defending what they did on October 7th as justified resistance against occupation is an erroneous conflation of the idea of freeing Palestinians with misinformation about what Zionism is, what Israel is, and the basic political realities of the region. Instead you should be fighting for the Palestinians to be freed from oppression by Hamas and for Israelis and Palestinians to sit down together – after Hamas has been eliminated – and work out a viable two-state solution that guarantees Israel’s security and Palestinian rights and freedoms.
As for the elimination of Hamas, Israel’s stated objective in the current war in Gaza, this is necessary both for Israel’s future security and for the security, peace, justice, and equality of a future Palestinian state. Hamas has no interest in peace, equality, or justice in any kind of terms that you and I would understand. Glory by death in martyrdom while trying to kill Jews and advance a fundamentalist Islamist agenda is their highest priority. They murder anyone in the way of these goals, including thousands of fellow Palestinians, and have done so for as long as they have existed. My heart, along with the hearts of every Jew and Israeli I know, breaks just like yours at the images of suffering in Gaza as a result of the war. But as long as Israelis know that Hamas will repeat what they did on October 7th until every Jew is dead, and as long as 230+ Israeli hostages remain in unknown condition in Gaza, and as long as Hamas defines itself as a death cult bent on murder and destruction, Israel knows that it has little choice but to press on. Hamas has been known for decades to hide behind schools and hospitals so that as much damage can be inflicted on civilian populations as possible. They do this so that the world will sympathize. They play on anti-Jewish sentiment that they know is alive and well in every part of the world in order to further their agenda. And when you march alongside people who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” you are actually letting them know that you, the youth of the world, are perfectly ok with that agenda.
In other words, the only way toward peace in the Middle East is to eliminate Hamas and other Iranian-sponsored terror organizations that seek to destabilize the region and delegitimize the existence of the state of Israel. And the only way to eliminate Hamas is to go after them among the civilians behind whom they hide.
No one (except Hamas) wants women and children to suffer. Civilians shouldn't lose their homes or even be forced out of them in the first place. People should not be piled up in refugee camps and dependant on aid trucks crawling across the border for food and water while their cities are being smashed to pieces by bombs and collapsing with the detonations of tunnels underneath their streets.
But what would you have Israel do? Not rhetorical, I'm asking because I want to know. Let's say 3000 armed men ran across the border into Canada or the US one fine morning and mutilated, gang-raped, beheaded, tortured, burned, and massacred 1200 of your fellow citizens in their homes and communities, while their compatriots sent thousands of rockets to smash buildings, roads, and cities all around you. Then these armed men bring back butchered bodies as trophies along with 240+ live hostages between the ages of 9 months old and 88 years old to their lands while bragging on the phone about how many they have killed and playing football with the heads of your dead along the way. And then these gleeful murderers, who are recording their glee in order to broadcast their great victory, are welcomed home by mobs of thousands of civilians, who spit on the naked dead body of a woman your age, brought back as a trophy, as they throw it around in celebration. Would you bomb their cities for a few weeks and then stop, figuring that they had learned their lesson? What if the official representatives of these 3000 armed men went on live TV at that point and swore that they would repeat this again and again until all of your people were dead? What if their mandate in fact called for the death of your people, not only in your land but around the world? Would you give up on getting those hostages back and reconcile with the fact that those who haven't been mutilated or raped to death will live out the rest of their miserable lives as sex slaves? Would you pause the bombing and the ground incursion so that the civilians Hamas is hiding behind can get a breather -- along with the terrorists themselves, so that they can regroup? Maybe get some more supplies and sophisticated weapons to keep fighting you for longer when you resume?
No one asked the Allies for a ceasefire when between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilians, were killed by Allied bombing in World War II. In fact, to do so would have been absurd, as it was well-known that sparing enemy civilians would result in the deaths of Allied civilians, and worse, the takeover of Allied nations by Nazis. On October 7th, 1,200 Israeli civilians were not bombed, mercifully dying in one fell swoop, but instead were tortured, mutilated, butchered, burned alive over hours, and then 240+ of them were dragged off alive behind enemy lines.
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Lastly, I want to tell you about who I am and where I’m coming from. I am tired of having who I am and what I believe told to me by people who don’t know me and have not led the life I’ve led or had the experiences I’ve experienced.
I’m a Jew. I was born to Jewish parents who were lucky enough to have had parents and grandparents who were able to move to Canada in response to the riots and violence (known as pogroms) occurring in the places where they were born in the 19th and early 20th centuries: the Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. Lucky, because it meant that they weren’t wiped out with the 6 million other Jews who remained in those areas during the Holocaust.
I’m a Zionist. This means that, as part of a people who understand our origins to have been in the ancient lands of Israel and Judea (hence “Jew”), a.k.a. Zion, between 2500 and 3000 years ago, I support the existence of the modern state of Israel. Even if my skin is light and my eyes are blue, the origin of my people is in the land of Israel, and for 1900 years our beliefs and practices have all formed around a longing for a return.
To me, the existence of the state of Israel means that – unlike our historical experience for 1900 years, from 135CE until 1948 – if antisemitism in my community ever gets bad enough that I feel unsafe (like now), I have a place to go where I will be accepted and granted citizenship under the law of return. I will never be persecuted there, as every generation of my ancestors have been persecuted in every other place in the world in which they have lived. I have been to Israel many times, because as an historian of religions, it is one of the richest and most amazing places in the world. I have a passion for archaeology and I love museums; much of my time in Israel is spent traveling around to different historical sites, shop-talking with archaeologist and historian colleagues, and wandering around museums.
Supporting the existence of the state of Israel is not the same as supporting the current Israeli government or its policies. In fact, the 39 weeks leading up to October 7th saw millions of Israelis – my friends and colleagues among them – protesting those policies. Part of what they were protesting were what they saw as racist policies of that government toward Palestinians, and they fought because these policies contradict their understanding of what Israel is all about.
I emphasize the above, because while it may not seem like it, much of what is currently going on is not a fight over better lives for Palestinians or a two-state solution. Hamas brutally attacked Israel simply because it exists. For Hamas, “the occupation” refers to the fact that there is a Jewish state on a tiny sliver of land (roughly the size of New Jersey) that they believe should not contain any Jews. Their charter urges the slaughter of Jews wherever they live.
Back to me: I’m also an atheist. Unlike Christianity or Islam, one can be a Jew and not believe in God. That’s because being a Jew means part of being a community with a shared sense of history, culture, languages, and ethics. It can also mean believing in the god of the Hebrew Bible, but I don’t. And I’m still a Jew.
Being raised Jewish has taught me a strong ethic of social justice and equal human rights. My Judaism feeds my feminism, as well as my other “left-wing” tendencies, like advocacy for the Black Lives Matter movement, and for equal LGBTQ+ rights. A fundamental principle for me is that all people be treated equally. My Judaism is likewise reflected in my choice to be vegan, to inflict as little pain on other living creatures as possible, and to preserve the planet for future generations. My Judaism also means that I have been a supporter of a free and equal state for Palestinians to live in health, dignity, and peace, for my entire life.
Some final notes:
I was in Israel with my daughter, who is roughly your age, on October 7th. We woke up that morning to the sounds of rocket explosions and air raid sirens, and learned from the news that armed terrorists were raping, torturing, and slaughtering communities about 20 km away from where we slept. Driving north in order to escape to relative safety right through those explosions was scary, but not as terrifying as the idea of staying put and having those same armed terrorists burst into our apartment building and torture and kill us or take us captive.
I weep for the children of Gaza. But I'm terrified for what it will mean for the children of Israel -- in every sense of the term -- if the IDF stops the bombing. And I'm terrified for my own children, and what it will mean for them and for us if there is no longer an Israel to which we can return as the Jew-hatred boils and spreads across our own neighborhoods at home.
If there is another way, tell me. I will be the first to advocate for a ceasefire, to spare more civilian deaths. But, like the Allies in World War II -- like any nation at war anywhere, any time -- if I have to choose between the enemy's children and my own, there is no choice.
So if you want to judge Israel's actions right now, try to understand what they're experiencing. Imagine your family murdered in hideous unspeakable ways. Imagine your 4 year old has been abducted to Gaza and not seen or heard from for almost a month. Imagine bombs falling daily on your cities. Imagine herding your children into safe rooms several times a day when the air raid siren or the terrorist incursion warning goes off. Imagine your sons and daughters on the front lines, waging a war for your country's right to exist. Imagine your parents or grandparents were refugees from exactly the same kind of horrific Jew-hatred -- from Yemen, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Germany, Russia... the list could go on. These are the citizens of Israel -- all refugees or descendants of refugees from Jew-hatred all over the world. They established a country on the land of their ancestors so that they wouldn't be subjected to the venom that is always simmering everywhere. They signed an agreement to share it and divide it with the Arabs who lived there too. Instead they were attacked, and continue to be attacked -- physically and also in the eyes of the world -- for their entire 75 year history. They are not perfect people. They have made a ton of mistakes and done a lot of things wrong along the way. But they are people who have no other country, and no other home, and haven't had one for 1900 years. And as they are defending it, people around the world are calling for the deaths of more Jews -- not Israelis, but JEWS -- and we are terrified. Where will we go when the western governments no longer have the backing of the people to stand up for us? Before you judge, or call for a ceasefire, put yourself in our shoes and tell me what you would do.
Another set of questions for you to think about: why is it that, when so many horrible things go on every day all over the world, the only Jewish state, with a population of 9 million people, receives such scrutiny and so much harsh judgment? Why are you constantly hearing about this and being called to participate in rallies about Palestinian suffering – rallies that feature swastikas and calls to “gas the Jews” – and not to participate in movements to free Nigeria, or Syria, or Yemen? An average 84 civilians have been killed every day in Syria for the past 10 years and no one is on their case; the civil war in Yemen has claimed almost 400,000 people's lives, almost a quarter of them children; Islamist violence in Africa kills tens of thousands of civilians annually; and the list goes on.
Other information that you’ll never see in the Western news media:
When the Arab Spring in 2011 set off a bloody civil war in Syria, during which it is estimated that President Bashar al-Assad exterminated over 400,000 of his own people – many of them children – Syrian families started appearing on the northern border of Israel. Soldiers, refugees, mothers, and children with horrific injuries were taken by the Israel Defense Forces to nearby Israeli hospitals and treated. As word spread and more and more sought treatment in Israel, in 2013 the Israeli military created a new unit called “Good Neighboring” (in Hebrew) to coordinate aid and treatment for the injured Syrians. Over 200,000 Syrians have been treated in Israel, including close to 50,000 children. When a soccer team was stuck in a cave in Thailand, Israel sent a group of Israeli divers. When an earthquake killed thousands in Haiti in 2010, Israel sent a crew of nurses and doctors in addition to food and water. The Israeli NGO IsraAID has provided physical and psychological support to over 160,000 refugees in Kenya, worked toward female empowerment in Nepal, and sent over 60 Israeli experts to train 3000 Japanese healthcare professionals in trauma treatment for the survivors of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. They developed a program to treat Yazidi women survivors of ISIS enslavement and trained Yazidis who returned to Iraq to help others. They collaborated with Jewish and Arab Israeli youth movements to set up the School for Peace for refugee children on the Greek island of Lesbos.
There is a lot more I could teach you, show you, point out to you, and I’d be happy to answer questions or discuss any of this with any of you if you would like to see other sides to the issues that are currently in the news. Neither legacy media nor social media are likely to give you a full account. Why? For one thing, opinions and half-truths greatly outweigh full historical accounts when someone is trying to sell something and do it in bite-sized takes. For another, the issues have become so polarized that in order to prove that their side is “right,” most people arguing about it leave out some things and exaggerate others, either on purpose or simply because they don’t know.
I don’t pretend to know everything by any stretch. But (a) I am meticulous in my research, (b) I’ve spent considerable time in the region and I know people on all political sides and what they believe and think and argue, and (c) I’m not an influencer, I’m an educator. I take my job very seriously, as any of my colleagues or students would testify. That's why I've taken the time to put this together for you while I'm on sabbatical.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to learn more.
Wishing better days for everyone,
Prof D