‘My biggest disappointment is with my own political home, the global Left’

MAYA GLASSMAN: As a peace activist, I always expected my partners in peacebuilding to denounce violence. Many didn’t utter one word about October 7, in person or in public.

It has taken me more than two weeks to be able to sit down and write anything. This is one of the most terrible times of my life. I’m still grieving. I find myself alarmed by loud noises or people who seem to be acting suspiciously. I wake up to this nightmare every morning, thinking about the babies, children, and elders among the hundreds of hostages who are now in their fourth week of captivity. I believe that all of you in the Australian Jewish community feel the same pain.

I am an Israeli peace activist who came to Australia about four years ago through a scholarship I received from a program that sponsors a master's degree in Peace and Conflict Studies for experienced peacebuilders across the globe.

In Israel, I organised protests for a two-state solution when I worked in the Peace Now movement.  I also worked as a political adviser in the Knesset, writing speeches for Meretz party MKs advocating for human rights. A couple of years ago I facilitated conflict-based dialogue groups between Israelis and Palestinians for the Seeds of Peace organisation.

With a Palestinian partner, I travelled to the UK, where we worked with the Solutions Not Sides program to explain how one can be a supporter of peace, rather than an inferno. I dedicated my time, effort and heart to promoting peace and compassion.

But over the past two weeks, something inside me has broken.

I thought that people who believed in the human spirit, in equality, liberty, peace - people like me - would know better. I believed it would be obvious that when young people at an outdoor dance party are butchered, dozens of babies are slaughtered, women raped and murdered, and children shot dead in front of their parents, there would be a huge outcry.

I trusted that people would condemn and grieve. Not only Israelis and Jews, but everyone who believes in the right to live and prosper. Liberal people, who despise violence, hate and cruelty. But they didn’t say a word after the October 7 bloodbath.

I am talking about people who consider themselves members of the progressive Left, philanthropists in the sense of love of humanity; peacebuilders who care about human rights. Many of these people I considered partners, colleagues, and friends. I worked with them to promote peace, studied conflict resolution practices with them, had deep conversations with them and enjoyed good laughs with them.

One example that hit close to home is Seeds of Peace (SOP), where I worked as a facilitator of conflict-based dialogue groups. It took SOP three days to publish a statement on social media—a deafening silence during a time of unspeakable violence. This delay itself is nothing short of a badge of shame for a self-proclaimed peacebuilding organisation.

The language they ultimately chose for their statement is inexcusable: “This weekend's attacks by Hamas and the Israeli response mark a new level of devastation...the killing and capturing of civilians is wrong, no matter who is responsible.” The statement failed to distinguish between the savage actions of Hamas and Israel's countermeasures. Moreover, using the word “capturing” to describe the brutal kidnapping of more than 200 people, including 33 children, is just a vanilla terminology that whitewashes this horrific act.

People can claim again and again that the Middle East conflict is complex, protracted and hard to understand; it’s all true. But this complexity will not stop a truly sensitive heart from feeling and understanding that the October 7 massacre was a barbaric attack on innocent civilians.

In the back of the minds of the people who keep quiet is the thought that the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza is good enough reason to justify the slaughter of more than 1400 Israelis, that this massacre was legitimate resistance. This idea makes them silent. It’s too complex, they say to themselves, and their hearts turn cold.

When your heart turns cold, nothing can get inside. You refuse to acknowledge the pain of others and stand up for what is right. There is no empathy. This is when a twisted rationale that justifies the killing of babies in the name of self-determination can take root, and a perverse moral judgment that equates a murderous terrorist organisation with a legitimate national movement can prevail.

Within this context, my biggest disappointment is with my political home, the global, progressive Left community. I always expected my friends, colleagues, and partners in my peacebuilding work to denounce violence, and while many did, a surprising number didn’t.

These are the people who I believed were holding the moral compass to show the path to a more peaceful future.

I feel disillusioned and I know that it is not a unique feeling these days. I’m blessed to be part of a community of young Jewish Australians in Brisbane. In recent days, many of them painfully shared about life-long friendships that are now in crisis. The hearts of their closest friends grow cold while they get lost in the political fog of the fake global Left who won't condemn these horrifying acts of terror.

Fake? Yes, totally fake. If Ivy League universities, the beacon of knowledge production, cannot denounce extreme terrorism, they are not the progressive, peace-seeking institutions they claim to be. The same applies to so-called progressive news outlets like the BBC that refuse to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Greta Thunberg, and anyone else who claims to advocate a future of inclusion, peace and equality but remains silent in the face of the murder of children.

More than 60 Israeli public intellectuals and peace activists issued an open letter expressing this same disappointment. They wrote: “We never imagined that individuals on the Left, advocates of equality, freedom, justice, and welfare, would reveal such extreme moral insensitivity and political recklessness.

“There is no contradiction between staunchly opposing the Israeli subjugation and occupation of Palestinians and unequivocally condemning brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians. In fact, every consistent leftist must hold both positions simultaneously.”

We shouldn’t let these cold hearts appropriate the Left. We shouldn’t abandon the peace camp, and we certainly shouldn’t let our own hearts grow cold. It is important for me to acknowledge the loss of lives in Gaza; innocent people should not pay the price for Hamas’s atrocity.

We must continue our fight for peace, human rights, and dignity. This is a crossroads for the Israel-Palestine conflict, and if we play it right, it could lead to a historic peace agreement. After all, one of Israel’s deadliest wars, the Yom Kippur War, led to the 1978 peace agreement with Egypt, the country once considered Israel’s worst enemy.        

Since October 7, there has been one positive development. Diaspora communities and Jewish Israeli communities have grown closer than ever, offering support to one another. The number of people who have joined the community groups I'm a part of in the past few weeks has been phenomenal. The warm conversations and the supportive community events being held make us all feel that we belong, are cared for, and understood.

Perhaps we've lost some people we once considered friends, but we have gained a resilient and compassionate community of our own.

READ MORE
The Israeli Left's Conceptions Collapsed Too (Haaretz)
Haaretz's pages are filled with pieces decrying the hypocrisy of the global left, much of which is exposing an ugly moral rot when it comes to Israel. While rushing to defend the people of Gaza, they nimbly skip over the unfathomable cruelty of Hamas and its accomplices.

Israeli Peace Activists Who Lost Loved Ones in the Hamas Massacre Stand Their Ground (Haaretz)
Many of the victims of the Hamas pogrom and their family members were and continue to be peace activists. The surviving relatives now have to deal not only with profound grief and dread, but also with hateful comments; but their personal tragedy hasn't changed their dovish stance. On the contrary

Jewish students at Cooper Union told to hide as pro-Palestinian protesters banged on doors of locked library (Forward)
At Cooper Union in Manhattan, two Jewish students said they feared assault in aftermath of protest

Alarming surge: 45 antisemitism incidents on US university campuses in just three days (Jerusalem Post)
"The impact of this rise in antisemitism is being directly felt by Jewish students," the study explained in detail.

Amnesty-led statement of solidarity with Gaza ignores Hamas atrocities (The Jewish Independent)

Yuval Noah Harari backs critique of leftist ‘indifference’ to Hamas atrocities (Guardian)

The ‘godfather of human rights’ criticized Israeli ‘apartheid’ — now he’s calling out the left for making excuses for Hamas (Forward)

31 Harvard organisations blame Israel for Hamas attack (NY Post)

Photo: Harvard College PSC