To my fellow Jews...

Already I have to stop. Just that sentence makes me uncomfortable, because I never used to identify as a Jew, as if that were the main part of my identity, before now.

I didn't hide it, but I didn't go around saying that I was a Jew because I didn't consider it an important part of who I am. I am not religious and I never felt an affinity with the Jewish community I grew up with in the U.S.A.

The Jewish community I grew up in -- and again, this is just my experience with my community, because there are other kinds of Jewish communities out there -- seemed tribal, exclusionary, provincial, and self-centered. It was full of stories of how we were special and better than others, often crossing into bigotry and hatred of the Other: Christians, Blacks, but especially, "Arabs", or Muslims, as they were synonymously (and erroneously) called.

I grew up hearing statements like "I hate Arabs" or "We [meaning Israel] should wipe them all out." Genocidal talk, in the name of protecting Israel, was commonplace from the same people who couldn't stop talking about their own genocide by the Nazis. The irony of the contradiction seemed completely lost on them. Their usual justification? Because We Are The Chosen People™. God said we can do whatever we want. The Holocaust was also often used to justify this mentality: What do you expect us to do when THEY [meaning the entire world of non-Jews] did this to us?

Which was understandable. The Holocaust was a huge trauma for the Jewish people; our own family also suffered generational trauma from the Holocaust. But allowing our trauma to warp our world view to the point that it is essentially sociopathic, without any recognition that it is fucked and needs to be healed, is a recipe for more suffering. For others and for ourselves.

In short: our Jewish community was the opposite of the wider, modern, cosmopolitan culture that I wanted to be a part of. With all reality constantly being filtered through the question, "But is it good for the JEWS??", to the exclusion of the fact that there was a whole world out there, of other people that also mattered, seemed infantile, selfish, and tiny-minded. It was maddening and depressing to me even as a preteen. To me, it seemed a pathetic, willfully dark and twisted world that insisted on keeping the doors closed to the larger world outside. The exact opposite of being a Citizen of the World.

And of course, mindless Zionism permeated everything. It could not be (and, in my experience, was not ever) questioned. One time, in the late 1980s, when I was in college, I was arguing with my father about the latest massacre Israel had committed against Palestinian civilians. My father kept defending Israel as he had been programmed to do, as if it were a holy thing that were beyond reproach, answering everything I said with rote talking points about Israel Right or Wrong, and Being Good for the Jews™. In frustration, I shouted, "Fuck Israel!" His shock at my words turned into fury. "Don't you EVER say Fuck Israel again!" My words were complete sacrilege. To him, it was as if I had said "Fuck God", and I don't think he ever forgave me for it.

And Israel is this mentality on steroids. I have traveled to Israel numerous times, to visit Israeli family members, and I never could leave fast enough. There are beautiful places and an incredible, diverse cultural history; there are good people there with fascinating stories, but I always felt like I was visiting a cult. The paranoia, militarism, and distortions of reality to such a degree that it seems to be a shared, society-wide psychosis, was suffocating, and served to distance me even more from my "Jewish identity".

And I do feel sorry for the Israelis who defend, cheer on, or even gleefully participate in this genocide, because if you grow up from birth in a tiny, hermetic strip of land, where reality is so grotesquely warped, and the cost of deviating from that reality is to lose your friends, family, place in society, and identity, what chance do you have?

Unless you leave... and even then, you might still refuse to see the truth. It is traumatic to realize that nearly everything you have been taught about your identity, your people, your country, and the essential goodness of all these things, is a big fat lie.

All this is background to the main point of this blog entry. Since Israel's response to the October 7th attacks by perpetuating a genocide in Gaza, in the name of all Jews, Judaism, in the name of the Holocaust and indeed our long history of persection, I have no choice but to identify myself as a Jew, as part of this group that I never felt good being a part of, if only to scream, NOT IN MY NAME.

So back to my question to my fellow Jews who have said nothing about the genocide, first through bombs and bullets, then through destruction of the health care system, now through FAMINE -- all premeditated, coordinated and publicly announced by Israeli officials such as Yoav Galant on October 9th...

This evil is being perpetrated in your name. IN YOUR NAME. Your name, your identity, your Jewishness, is being branded on the genocide of our Palestinian cousins. Whether you like it or not, you have been dragged into it.

What are you going to do about it?

When are you going to finally speak up?

How many more thousands of innocent men, women, and children have to die before you will say something about the murders being committed IN YOUR NAME?

I'm not asking any great thing from you. I'm not asking you to set yourself on fire like Aaron Bushnell or even join a street protest. I'm not asking you to stop living your life, just as I haven't stopped living mine.

I'm simply asking you, as you sit on your ass, posting minutiae about your personal life on Facebook or Instagram, or chattering about the latest series/movie you're watching...

When are you going to recognize that there is a filthy genocide going on in your name, by a murderous, sociopathic state that has stolen the name of your religion, and say something to the effect that:

1. Yes, it is actually happening, right now, just as the Holocaust happened, which has been so hard for us to forgive the world for ignoring when it could have done something about it, and

2. No, it is not okay.

That's it.

A genocide is happening in your name.

It has been happening for 6 months.

What are you waiting for?

When will you do it?