In the year 2000, it was easy to travel to Gaza. Four massive Israeli military incursions and now this current, devastating war had not yet pounded it to rubble, had not yet destroyed its fragile economy, water supply and electrical grid. I joined a sight-seeing tour with a couple of friends.
Gaza was crowded and cramped. The sea was gorgeous. The poverty was relentless. We went to an amusement park, the beach, a beekeeping warehouse, ancient ruins, a café and a purse shop.
Then, a refugee camp. We wound our way through claustrophobic alleys that snaked from despair to bitterness and back again to despair. We finally arrived at the home of a Palestinian family. A man welcomed us into the family’s one room, which sheltered nine people. A young woman slipped me a scrap of paper with her phone number on it. “Get me out of here,” she whispered.
Gaza overwhelmed me. I try to imagine what despair and desperation look like now after Israel imposed its cruel blockade over two million Palestinians, turning Gaza into an open-air prison. I cannot.
And that’s the problem. I spent only nine hours in Gaza. I do not know the society. I would not know what to order at a restaurant. I cannot read or speak Arabic. I have no friends or family who live there.
I have only limited memories of Gaza, but I know Israel. After Hamas launched its heinous attacks which killed over 1300 people, photographs of dead Israelis flooded my social media. These people looked like me. They dressed like me. I once lived on a kibbutz. I might have partied at a desert rave in my younger years. I felt a palpable sense of familiarity.
Numerous friends shared stories of loved ones who were brutally killed or taken hostage in Hamas’ bloody rampage. A massacre of 260 Jews at a music festival. A child abducted. An elderly woman shot dead. My anguish runs deep.
The only stories I know of dead Gazans are the ones I have read about. I try to feel the desperation of the young woman I met in the refugee camp 23 years ago. I wonder if she is alive, and if she is, what her life must be like now. I try to imagine living without electricity. Or essential medicines. Or finding clean water when 97 percent of the wells are contaminated. I try to comprehend how she copes with the trauma of living through incessant bombing with no way out.
I used to believe that Israel was a unique experiment that would create a just society. It would mean liberation for the Jewish people. It had its flaws and weaknesses, but I supported Israel as a Jewish state.
My dream of Israel died in that refugee camp.
Now I hear bloodthirsty calls for revenge. Flatten Gaza. Eradicate Gaza. As Israel’s Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, said calmly and unequivocally about Israel’s siege of Gaza, “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting against human animals.”
The world will not forget when Jews, themselves persecuted throughout history, unleashed unspeakable terror on another people.
Am I heartbroken? Yes. Scared? Yes. Do I agree with the rhetoric coming from some parts of the left that cheers on Hamas? Certainly not.
But I do not believe in revenge.
This is the time to turn towards international law, established after World War II, to prevent calamitous wars from erupting again. While imperfect in practice, these principles must guide us at this time.
No one may kill civilians, no matter the reason for war. International law is unequivocal. Civilians must not be targeted under any circumstance. No one may cause disproportionate harm. The brutality of one side does not justify the brutality of the other.
Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians constitute a war crime, both its indiscriminate firing of thousands of missiles into Israel and its killing and taking civilians hostage.
Yet we must not be silent in the face of Israel’s own war crimes: laying siege to Gaza by closing the borders and depriving civilians of electricity, food, water and fuel. The Hamas rampage does not give Israel permission to mercilessly bomb civilians, sometimes killing entire families.
My core values are democracy, equality, human rights and civil rights. It’s important to articulate them over and over again. I don’t want to practice a version of Judaism, or be part of a Jewish community, that sidelines or stifles them.
This is not the time to root for your team. This is the time to stand on the side of humanity. To protect civilians. To imagine a future when Israelis and Palestinians both live in safety and with dignity.
This past Yom Kippur, when the recent attack by Hamas was unimagined, I gave a sermon about Israel and said the following:
On Yom Kippur we take time to consider our ideals, and visions, and the narratives that shaped us. We take stock of who we are, and of what we believe. We ask ourselves whether the stories of our past still speak to the actual world we live in. We ask ourselves whether our political beliefs are aligned with our values. We ask ourselves, in what way will we engage and speak out?
I believe that Israel is the most important moral issue of the Jewish people in this era. What happens in the next ten or twenty years will profoundly affect the future of Jews, Judaism and Jewish life.
My core values are democracy, equality, human rights and civil rights. I think it’s important to articulate them over and over again. I don’t want to practice a version of Judaism, or be part of a Jewish community, that sidelines or stifles them.
At this time of war, I stand by these words. Now is the time to embrace our deepest values and protest this bloodshed.
—
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman is the rabbi at Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison, Wisconsin.
25 Responses
Rabbi Zimmerman, you voice clarity and moral precision in these terrible times. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, for articulating so well these values at this difficult time.
Thank you!! Amen!!
Thank you for articulating what Jewish values need to be in play in this horror show..
Thank you Rabbi Zimmerman for voice of sanity and morality!
Thank you, Rabbi Laurie, for standing up when it’s fashionable to seek revenge and the inevitable killing of non combatant civilians under the guise of self defense.
Rabbi, thank you for being the moral voice we need. We cannot let fear and tribalism override our humanity.
I’ve needed to hear these words. Thank you, Rabbi.
Bless you, Laurie, for always keeping what’s important centred and for articulating the complexities of this situation so beautifully.
Thank you Laurie. So glad you’re our Rabbi.
Thank you, R. Laurie.
I don’t know if you remember me — I remember you from when we were in JUSJ together. And I couldn’t understand your perspective then.
I hadn’t been to Gaza. What we see and really know matters.
Thank you for writing this. Be well.
Dear Rabbi Zimmerman:
I know your heart is in the right place. Nobody wants to kill innocent people indiscriminately. I am sure you know that.
What I am about to write is my personal opinion, and not that of my synagogue or its members.
Israel has absolutely nothing to gain from, as you say, killing thousands of innocent Palestinian citizens. They are not doing that! I am sure you know that is NOT the objective of the IDF’s military campaign. Do you really think that the IDF goal is to kill thousands of innocent Palestinians? Their ONLY stated objective is to permanently wipe out the thousands of soldiers or terrorists of Hamas, NOT to kill innocents.
That is what Hamas does. They have stated so.. Hamas has been killing innocent Israelis for many years, this year was the worst. In the past, Israel has just lived with it. They were always worried about world opinion. That will not stand any more. The Hamas murders must stop now.
This time, Israel has determined to end Hamas’s control of Gaza. Hamas has not served its own citizens well, but rather continued the terrorist killing of Israelis. The media almost always express outrage when Israel kills Palestinians.
Israel has no interest in killing innocent Palestinians. They have nothing to gain from such terrorist acts.
Where is the outrage about what Hamas did two weeks ago to innocent Israelis? The press barely got upset about it.
Your comments express outrage about Israel’s response to its innocent civilians being murdered, even calling it “revenge”.
Yet you spend almost no time expressing disgust for the thousands of Hamas murders and kidnapping of thousands of Jews? I am sickened by your lack of concern for the lives or safety of the Israelis. Most of your talk expresses disgust and embarrassment for the behavior of Israel, and almost none for the far worse behavior of Hamas. I don’t get how a Jewish leader could show so little concern for dead Jews, yet such great concern for the Palestinians? EVERY life is holy – Palestinian and Jew – but you and others don’t seem to agree with that. The Jews must die, and that’s OK. The Jews must turn the other cheek as their citizens are mowed down. I just don’t get it. Do you?
You will NEVER see Israel:
-parade and drag bloody naked bodies through the streets, to the cheers of its citizens.
– raping and murdering innocent women, then display them on the Internet.
– decapitating soldiers, taking their heads as trophies back home.
– go door to door, and house to house, dragging out men, women, babies, elderly and shooting them in the streets.
– go to a music festival, shooting 260 young people to death, then take 100 hostage.
This is what Hamas does, this is what terrorists do. This is not what Jews do.
You must differentiate between the terrorists, and what a free society must do to protect itself from further murders.
If La Crosse shot thousands of rockets at Madison and surroundings, then came into Madison with thousands of terrorists, killing people in their own homes, what would be the ONLY proper action, in your opinion?
What would the citizens of Viroqua DEMAND be done, to stop the murders, permanently?
Not revenge, not killing of innocents, but going into the place the terrorists come from and prevent them from doing it again.
Please put yourself and your neighbors in the place of the Israelis.
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. As a Jewish leader, you feel you have an obligation to let others know what you believe.
I ask that you please put yourself in the place of the thousands of Jewish mothers who have lost their children, parents, loved ones, and whose hundreds of family members are hostage in Gaza. Can you even imagine this happening to your family?
I would love to discuss this with you further. Your feelings and concerns are very important to our mutual Jewish communities. You are not alone in what you express. Many other members of our community all over the country are asking our fellow Jews in Israel to turn the other cheek, and live with the constant murder and terrorism. I also cherish the lives of innocent Palestinians. I harbor only disgust for the Hamas terrorists and those who commend their actions.
And I want so much to understand the Jewish values you are expressing.
I wish you a Shabbat Shalom.
Thank You Rabbi Laurie. I wish my own rabbi felt the way you do. I am now seriously considering a break from Conservative Judaism and turning to Reconstructionism.
Amen, Rabbi Laurie!
Thank you for so beautifully expressing the views of so many Jews in our community.
Thank you.
Profound, heartfelt thanks for your moral clarity on this deeply upsetting situation. Having also traveled there, I can’t help wondering whether any of the people I met or faces I saw, are even alive now. It is not going to be resolved soon, and I appreciate your comforting wisdom. – Paula Dail
“My core values are democracy, equality, human rights and civil rights.” Mine, too Rabbi, but you duck the hardest question. Hamas endorses none of our value, is pledged to uproot Israel.
The government of Israel must do what it can to prevent future massacres. All Israelis agree, and I’m sure you and I do too. So, what strategy , what policy do you recommend that will protect Israel without destroying innocent lives?
Heartfelt and right on; eloquent and reflects my feelings and thoughts exactly.
Thank you for your words. Love and light must lead our way.
Thank you.
Anyone with empathy would struggle over being outraged and horrified and grieving over the terrible casualties inflicted on Israel and somehow be expected to block out such reactions to the siege and punishment of Gazan civilians (I have zero sympathy for Hamas itself and its actions, to be clear.) My mother’s family were refugees from Europe during WWII. Mother never felt truly safe her entire life after she got here. She was 16 and arrived in a country where half the population hated Germans and the other half hated Jews. She hid in plain sight. It took years for her to feel safe enough even to discuss this with my generation and me, behind closed doors. But when she was alive, she was intensely against some of the right-wing rhetoric playing out in Israel (not, mind you, the state of Israel and its right to exist and its having made a home for the world’s Jews, which she wholeheartedly supported.) I feel sad and scared for everyone. I am frustrated with the idea that unless someone loudly expresses unilateral support for the Jewish people and not the Palestinian civilians, they are deemed antiSemitic at worst and “unsafe to be around” at … no, I cannot say “best.” Intersectionality is going out the window with this reaction, as well.
It would appear that Zionism is no longer a Reconstructing Judaism value. I guess that makes the movement anti-Zionism, and by extension opposed to the existence of a Jewish homeland. Pity our generation who have sacrificed the 2000 year old Jewish dream to the transient woke culture that values all lives, except those of Jews.
It is heartbreaking to me that you make it sound as if the Israelis are taking ‘revenge’ on the civilians of Gaza, when Israel’s aim is clearly to eradicate Hamas who embed themselves, their weapons and their infrastructure among their own civilian population. You do not question the responsibility that Hamas has to the people they govern – and they are the elected government of Gaza – and their complicity in the deaths of their own people, or the inaction of the Arab world who does not offer safe haven to Gazans who would want to leave their warzone homes. Your silence on these facts does not seem to correlate with a dedication to democracy, equality, human rights and civil rights.
It is heartbreaking to me that you make it sound as if the Israelis are taking ‘revenge’ on the civilians of Gaza, when Israel’s aim is clearly to eradicate Hamas who embed themselves, their weapons and their infrastructure among their own civilian population. You do not question the responsibility that Hamas has to the people they govern – and they are the elected government of Gaza – and their complicity in the deaths of their own people, or the inaction of the Arab world who does not offer safe haven to Gazans who would want to leave their warzone homes. Your silence on these facts does not seem to correlate with a dedication to democracy, equality, human rights and civil rights.
As an Arab-American with Christian and Muslim background, I would be honored to be your congregant. Thank you and God bless.