Both are True

 This is a bit of an essay, but this has been percolating for some time. I sit with this duality, one that I think a lot of progressive Jews share, though I only speak for myself here. When it comes down to it, I see two truths from two sides, each wanting to deny the other, each wanting me to deny the other. And I just cannot do that. Because the reality is that I think both are true.

Antisemitism is real, and it remains far higher than it was before October 7, 2023. Israel was mercilessly attacked on October 7th, and the world, at least to me, seemed dismissive and hostile before Israel even responded. Hamas would like nothing more than to ethnically cleanse the Jewish people from Israel, at the least, and it has shown no hesitation about embedding itself among the civilians it claims to represent.

I believe the Jewish people have the right to exist safely and collectively in a homeland, in the State of Israel. My belief is not random or driven by colonial desires. It comes from centuries of displacement, exclusion, and violence. It comes from the reality of what happens when a people has nowhere to determine its own fate. It comes from my own family's stories!

That doesn't mean I don't care or that I don't want the best for the Palestinian people. The right to self-determination, dignity, and a homeland belongs to Palestinians too. We need to stop treating these as competing truths. Both are real. Both are needed. Being expected to deny the truth of my own people in order to acknowledge the truths of the Palestinian people is not solidarity. It's erasure with a different target. But it works the other way too: we cannot ask the Palestinian people to erase their truth in order to validate our own. Both are true. As a progressive American Jew, I think it is a grave injustice to deny either. We are not playing a football match here. These are people's lives, children's futures, and our future depends on finding peace with each other: acknowledging the other's truth, hearing it, feeling it, and, for G-d's sake, trying to find understanding.

This is what I feel many Jews need acknowledged: For the many centuries since the original displacement of many Jews (but not all) by the Romans, wherever we’ve been, we’ve been treated as outsiders, as “enemies of the state,” violently attacked, imprisoned, tolerated at times (this is very different from being accepted as full citizens), othered, targeted, taunted, and the list goes on. Jewish migration back to Israel did not start with the Holocaust either. Throughout history, periods of Jewish return and exile to the Levant have recurred. Waves of Jews began moving back again in the 1880s, driven in part by escalating pogroms across the Russian Empire, decades before the Holocaust made the need existential. Those who fled went wherever they thought they might finally find safety, but "wherever" wasn't much of a choice. America and other countries imposed increasingly restrictive immigration policies. People didn't get to choose. They went wherever a door was open, even a crack.

This included Ashkenazi Jews; many have stories like my own family's. My great-uncle was exiled to Siberia in the 1900s for his part in the Communist movement, while the rest of his family, my family, fled. He stayed, married, and raised his kids in Siberia. During Stalin's purges, he was arrested as an "enemy of the people" and executed. His son, my cousin, spent his childhood running from raids and was later drafted into a war that never trusted him with a weapon. It took more than fifty years, and a mass grave, before the family learned the truth of what happened to my great-uncle. Some Jews made it out. He never did. And, for many others in my family, we have absolutely no idea what happened to the siblings and parents of those who made it out.

Also, I think it is also important, and often completely ignored, that Ashkenazi Jews were not the only Jews fleeing. About 45% of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi and 32% are Ashkenazi, with the rest being of mixed background or from communities such as those in India, Central Asia, and Ethiopia. Let’s talk about the Mizrahi Jews for a moment, as they are the plurality of Jews in Israel. 800,000 Jews from Arab countries were displaced from their homes in Arab lands when Israel came into existence. And, yes, this was mirrored by the mass displacement of the people we now call Palestinians. I say "now call" because pre-1948, the term was used for Jewish as well as Arab residents of the territory. For clarity, I’ll use the term the way it’s used today.

Here's where I think, speaking only for myself, the Jewish American community is falling short: what we must acknowledge to move forward together. In 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes and towns as the State of Israel was created. My great-uncle’s story is my family's story to tell. I don't have that same right to the Palestinian story, and I won't pretend otherwise. They have a right to tell their story, and I have an obligation to recognize the pain they and their families have experienced, not just in the past, but in the story that continues. 

Israel's military response to October 7th has devastated Gaza, causing catastrophic destruction and suffering for Palestinian civilians. While many Hamas terrorists were killed, many other Gazans, including women and children, were killed, injured, and displaced too, unable to get the food, water, education, health care, and a safe place to live that EVERY HUMAN deserves. Netanyahu has governed with a coalition of ultra-right-wing thugs, whose leaders would like nothing more than to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, at the least. Ben-Gvir and other far-right ministers have renewed calls for the mass "voluntary emigration" of Palestinians from Gaza, while Smotrich has openly supported settlement expansion in the West Bank and said it would prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. Settler violence in the West Bank is abhorrent and disgusting and against the very values so many of us hold dear. We also need to acknowledge these truths.

As American Jews, we should, of course, stand up against antisemitism and support a peaceful, safe existence for all people who are not committed to the destruction of others, including Israelis and Palestinians. We can do that while also opposing policies and political leaders that threaten the safety, dignity, self-determination, or democratic rights of either people.

This isn’t about a choice between which people's suffering is real. I don't have to minimize October 7th to acknowledge what has happened to Palestinians, and I don't have to minimize Palestinian suffering to acknowledge what Jewish history teaches us about the danger of a world without a safe place for Jews. I can hold both. In fact, I think we have to.

No Kings

I put this together in response to a mocking question about No Kings.  This one was co-written with my spouse, who added the more academic sounding content. :)

Whether the job title is king, lord protector, emperor, chancellor, fuhrer, kaiser, pharaoh, ayatollah, sultan, caliph, prime minister, party chairman, or president, the behaviour of a king, as opposed to the leader of a republic who respects democratic norms, is recognizable. The king uses his state or government position to enrich himself (or herself in some cases) or his family or close associates. The king ignores, undermines, weakens, intimidates, or subverts institutions such as the media, courts, the professional national military, the professional civil service, the legal profession, the education system, and the legislature. The king seeks to replace the apolitical national military with one that is loyal to him, not to the nation. He empowers informal militias and street thugs to intimidate people. He uses ethnic, religious, and other facets of society to divide and weaken people, shift blame, scapegoat, and distract. He deploys the military and national police or police-like organizations to control his own people.

Between 1998 and 2019, I lived all over the world, including South Asia, Southern and Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. So I know places that have dealt with civil unrest and civil war. Places that have seen dictators and communism, and at times called themselves a democracy.

Let me tell you a little about what I've seen and experienced, and the historical context I've learned directly from the people who lived it. You know what preceded communism? Dictators and oligarchs. Countries where the wealthy 1% keep their people uneducated, blame any outsider they can and funnel money to themselves, their family members and their cronies. The people buy it for a while, but at some point they get wise to it and revolt. Sadly, the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and sometimes back and forth. Democracy is supposed to be the better way, letting the people have a voice. I've always loved the old line that democracy isn't perfect, but it's better than all the rest. I do believe that with all my heart. But democracies have to be valued and protected.

Let me make another point. Socialism and communism aren't the same thing. Lumping them together makes an easy target, but it's nothing more than a red herring (pun intended). The real problem is any government, whether its economic system is socialist, communist, capitalist or otherwise, that's ruled by an authoritarian regime or by those who aspire to be one. They all do it the same way, by taking apart whatever could check them.

I know the signs of a flailing or failing democracy. The US government uses a version of them itself (hopefully still does), through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, to decide which countries are eligible for our development aid: freedom of information, government accountability, personal freedom, rule of law, government effectiveness, and control of corruption are the factors used to determine eligibility. I also realize the MCC's goal is to help the US provide aid. But those criteria were developed for a reason, and I think they're strong markers in any case.

There are just so many examples to choose from, but this is already an essay. So, here are a few I see when I look at those markers in the US right now. Reporters have been shut out of the White House over their coverage and pushed out of the Pentagon for refusing to sign a pledge, and even Fox News objected. There's an effort to restrict mail ballots. People have been targeted for what they say, including a US senator. Service members who are transgender, after years of serving our country with honor, are being treated as disposable and denied the benefits they earned. Law firms were bullied into deals because of who they represent. Career government workers are at risk of losing their job protections, inspectors general have been sidelined and there are serious questions about the president profiting from his office. It adds up. And, it's overwhelming.

I know courts have blocked some of this, and I hope they keep doing it. What worries me is how much now comes through emergency orders with little or no explanation, and how a ruling only checks anything if it's followed. Any one of these would be bad enough. Every president pushes on limits, and I've disagreed with plenty of them. But I haven't seen another president do so many at once. In the places I've lived, no single thing tipped a democracy. It was the pile-up, each weakened check making the next one easier to remove.

Here's the part that worries me most. I have serious doubts about whether a peaceful alternance of government and transfer of power will always be possible. A leader who wants to keep himself or his chosen successors in power undermines the integrity of elections, threatens to cancel or delay them, and uses legal, rhetorical, and potentially violent action to prevent the transfer of power. We haven't seen a president cancel an election, and I hope we never do. But after 2020, I watched what looked to me like an effort to stay in power after losing, from the pressure on state officials to January 6th. So when I see talk of restricting ballots and questioning results, I don't think it's dramatic to worry about where that road goes. I'd rather say it out loud now than wish I had later.

You don't have to agree with my reasons or my examples; that's your right, and as a patriotic American, I will honor that right until the day I die. But you asked, and I'm giving you my good-faith effort to respond. I'm not trying to change your mind. I am, however, hoping that by responding in good faith, you will at least see that I have meaningful reasons to worry about our country and the path I see us on, the path I've seen other countries take. That is why I protest. If there ever comes a day when I am not allowed to, that will be the day it's too late, and I want to make sure that day never comes.