Published: 7 November 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
As he drowns in a deluge of social media skirmishes, JO FRIEDMAN says better to meet and discuss in person, console friends or give to charities.
To be a Jew right now is to be utterly consumed by one story.
To be a Jew who was raised Jewish, who went to a Jewish school, whose friends are mostly Jewish and who remains embedded in the Jewish community, is to be deeply shaken.
To be a Jew who has visited Israel several times, who lived there for his gap year, who feels its spiritual pull, and who dreams of showing his future children its land and its people, is to be overwhelmed, exhausted and sad.
I often wondered whether I was more “pro-Israel” than my friends who are not Jewish (but with whom I share most other views) because I was biased – a product of 15 years of school-supported indoctrination – or whether it was simply because I knew more.
I know that Israel’s existence is not a consequence of colonialism. I know that using language like “decolonisation” to justify the unjustifiable erases the humanity of Israeli Jews, the majority of whom are people of colour.
I know that Israeli Jews did not appear from thin air in 1948. In fact, many had been there for thousands of years and others arrived in their hundreds of thousands after being exiled from nearby Arab nations or displaced after the Holocaust.
So many seem sure that we must debate and convince. But I wonder if we do. There will be no referendum on Israel Vs Hamas.
And I can point to scholarship and essays showing that despite Israeli failings, it was Yasser Arafat’s unwillingness to compromise that led to the stalemate at Camp David – the closest Israel and Palestinians ever came to peace.
When a friend reached out to check in while simultaneously posting several Instagram stories about Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza, I knew enough to explain the distinction between a reasonable critique of Israel’s actions and the intentional extermination of a population.
