I wear a Star of David around my neck, the same one that Israel uses to embellish its flag. I am proud to be Jewish, proud of Judaism’s centuries-old tradition of resisting oppression — a pride that Israel invariably insists it shares. I believe in equality, humanity, democracy and progress, the very same values Israel claims to uphold. It is due to my deeply held convictions that, while appreciating the ideal of Israel, I cannot but detest the reality of the settler-colonialist, ethnocentric, militarist state that occupies the land between the Jordan and the sea.
The invitation by Brown/RISD Hillel of Sgt. Benjamin Anthony, an Israel Defense Forces veteran and apologist for the occupation of Palestine, sparked a large protest that I was proud to participate in and help organize. Anthony is the embodiment of much of what is so terribly wrong with Israel today. His philosophy mirrors that of so many on the increasingly dominant Israeli right, which justifies unconditionally all of Israel’s actions based on an intellectually vacuous rhetoric of nationalism and duty to one’s country. If history has taught us anything, it is that this type of discourse is exactly the perfect catalyst for atrocities.
Israel was founded in 1948 largely due to the horrendous crimes of the Holocaust. However, what followed was the brutal military dispossession of almost a million indigenous Palestinians of their land and the subsequent denial of their right to return, for which they and their descendants still fight today. This catastrophe is called the Nakba, and looms as large in Palestinian cultural memory as the events three years preceding it loom in Jewish collective memory. This campaign of incidental and purposeful cleansing of the land was the first step in ensuring an ethnically dominant Jewish population in Israel, a campaign that continues to the present day.
Israel was created as a state to allow Jews to escape persecution and anti-Semitism, and to live freely and proudly among equals. It is a tragic irony that the actions of this state have appropriated the identity of “Jewishness” while perpetrating atrocities in the name of the Jewish state. Many Jews in Israel and around the world are certainly not proud to be associated with military occupation and war crimes by virtue of the state that claims a monopoly on their religion, yet they do not believe they have had the freedom to express this fundamental dissent.
Moreover, Israel’s own policies and the prejudices of the dominant white Ashkenazi population do not allow all Jews to live in peace and equality, as darker-skinned Sephardi Jews are lucky if they “pass,” and the horrible reports of forced sterilization of black Ethiopian Jews immigrating to Israel are becoming far too frequent. By placing the star I wear around my neck on its flag, Israel attempts to speak in my name, and in the names of all Jewish people worldwide, while acting in ways that many of us not only vehemently oppose, but consider literally anti-Jewish.
Of course, Israel’s most egregious crimes are the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza. While the common stereotype propagated by Western media is that Palestinian resistance is violent, those committing violence on the Palestinian side make up a minuscule minority. Overwhelmingly, Palestinian resistance is nonviolent peaceful protest, resembling Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi far more than al-Qaeda.
However, these peaceful protests are brutally repressed by the IDF’s rubber bullets, live bullets and tear gas canisters used as direct projectiles, with lethal consequences for those struggling for freedom and autonomy. Men, women and children are killed or arrested in the night and held without trial for months or years. Freedom of movement is restricted by countless checkpoints, where Palestinians are stopped for hours and humiliated on a daily basis. Many roads are only for Jewish settlers, who are able to harass and attack Palestinians with impunity. All these crimes against the very humanity of a people occur against the backdrop of a separation — read: apartheid — wall that not only steals Palestinian land, but looms as the most concrete representation of their status as unwelcome outsiders, dehumanized “others.”
My parents, fierce Zionists and Israeli nationalists, lived under the heavy mental, emotional and at times physical abuse of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. I was lucky enough to not have to experience any anti-Semitism in my life, as I grew up in the United States. Jews do not make up a majority of the United States, nor is ours a “Jewish nation.” Still, I and countless other American Jews are able to live as equals among equals, unafraid of discrimination and proud of our Judaism. This should serve as a lesson to Israel: It has no need to fear the “demographic threat” of the Palestinians, no need to brutally repress others so that Israeli Jews can enjoy freedom. Israel’s fear of Palestinian freedom will prove as baseless as the fears of white Southerners and South Africans for the survival of their populations once they were forced to stop their oppression of blacks.
While much reconciliatory work would need to be done to build a nation in which all people can live equally and with dignity, an end to the occupation and full equal rights for everyone will not doom Israel or preclude it from being a state safe and welcome for Jews. Rather, it will give a rebirth to Israel’s Judaism and create a Judaism that loves rather than hates, that accepts rather than discriminates. Israelis can confidently look to the sea and be assured that the Palestinians will not drive them into it. They will never return the favor.
I want to love Israel, as my parents do. I want to feel a connection to my people’s historic land. However, my people’s history is one of fiercely resisting oppression, not perpetrating it, of fighting for all that is right, not defending all that is wrong. I want to love Israel, but first Israel has to learn to love itself enough to accept all people as equals between the Jordan and the sea.
David Katzevich ’16 is a radical believer that a better world is possible through collective action and has an unquenchable thirst for justice and an undying love for humanity. He can be reached at david_katzevich@brown.edu.
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