Holocaust is not a verb

My first article for TJI, Dear anti-Zionist..., was published just last week. While I was blown away by the responses it received, there was one that stood out.

“It takes a true narcissist to make this about antisemitism or anti-Zionism rather than what it really is. Dead people!

This comment didn’t come from a stranger, it came from an old friend. We’d lived in the same neighbourhood and had children around the same time. We bonded over parenting and joked about the similarities between our cultures: Jewish and Iranian (not the Elica Le Bon variety of Iranian as it turns out).

She had been one of the very first people to reach out to me with genuine empathy after the October 7 attacks. She expressed heartache for what had happened in Israel. She thanked me when I posted about collective suffering and included Palestinians in Gaza.

Despite our different perspectives, we were able to come together on the most human of levels – as two mothers who just wanted the pain to end. I thanked her for her humanity and she thanked me for always answering her questions with respect.

Somewhere in the haze of this past year, her tone shifted. Israelis she had initially felt empathy for became absolute villains in a black and white narrative. There was no longer any grey in her mind.