Dear Jewish Friends
I am writing to you as a Black woman in America. I am writing to you as a human who understands fear. I am writing to you to implore you to seek the truth, no matter how painful. Please hear me.
Dear Jewish friends and colleagues,
I am writing to you as a Black woman in America.
I understand fear.
I understand violence.
I understand oppression.
I understand the need for safety, thus this letter being penned anonymously.
And I also understand that collective liberation requires truth.
This is why I am writing to you today.
Since October 7, many of us Black folks have been interrogated by our Jewish friends and associates . . .
“Why aren’t you standing with us?” people ask.
“Why aren’t you standing for Israel?”
While the question itself breaks my heart, the answer must be unambiguous.
It is because I have had my eyes opened.
It is because I serve truth for future generations.
It is because Israel is NOT on the side of collective liberation.
Allegiances are built upon shared beliefs and goals. Solidarity is built upon shared truth.
We need to face TRUTH.
As I read the recent cover story from The Atlantic, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending”, and reflected on yet another recent cover story from TIME Magazine, “The New Antisemitism”, I realized that the experience of fear – the experience of feeling vulnerable, of feeling unsafe – has been equated with hatred.
I know that feeling of fear very well. Yet I also know the difference between feeling unsafe and actually experiencing hatred or violence or, particularly for Black males, death. Additionally, I know that for my entire life, it has been impressed upon me that Jewish people are the chosen people, that they have a sacred homeland in Israel, and that they know about hatred, violence, and the crime of all crimes – genocide – through the experience of the Holocaust.
But what I did not know, and have only really learned since October 7, is that just as there is a mythology at play in America that creates a racial hierarchy that places white people at the top, there is mythology at play in relation to Israel – and American Jews’ relationship to Israel – that has never been questioned as widely as it has in recent months.
While, of course, a very different situation, just as the murder of George Floyd opened new eyes to the reality of white supremacy in the United States, the events that have unfolded since October 7, and the dialogue that has accompanied them, have opened my eyes to the reality of a form of Jewish supremacy that for so many Americans has been invisible.
First and foremost, I acknowledge the atrocity of what happened on October 7. I lament the lives lost, I believe the war crimes perpetrated should be punished, and I have always advocated for the hostages to be returned.
That is not an issue here.
But what I have also seen is a persistent lack of acknowledgment of the humanity of civilians in Gaza who have paid the price for extremist behavior, a blanket application of “But Hamas . . .” to excuse actions by the IOF that absolutely fall under war crime and genocidal doctrine, and a willingness to label efforts toward a ceasefire as somehow antisemitic.
It’s the latter of these that lead to detrimental cover stories like the ones from TIME and The Atlantic that paint Jews as the targets of antisemitism without a critical examination of the root causes that have created the grueling times in which we find ourselves. My personal journey along this learning curve has been intense and steep and has led me to remove a veil I didn’t even know existed.
Before October 7, I had never heard of the Nakba. I had never learned that there were indeed people in the areas of Palestine that the United Nations decided would become the state of Israel. I never knew that Palestinians were forced out of their homes, forced off the only land they’d ever known. Did you know? If not, please ask yourself why.
I didn’t know that Palestinians in Gaza lived under military occupation and apartheid conditions, which have been condemned by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. I didn’t know that centuries-old olive tree groves were bulldozed. I didn’t know about separate roads, separate schools, the rationing of caloric intake. Did you know? If not, please ask yourself why.
As far as I know, these stories have never been widely told, and yet since October 7, Americans (particularly on the political left) have learned about the unjust living conditions that Israel has created for Palestinians – and we are angry for them.
Angry that our tax dollars are funding a separatist government.
Angry that our tax dollars are being used to purchase weapons abroad instead of being used to meet our own country’s pressing needs in areas like education, healthcare, housing, and food security.
Angry that what we’ve been told is “the only Democracy in the Middle East” is actually an occupying state that currently has a government to the right of the Trump administration.
And angry that, if you keep pulling back the veil, we also see that AIPAC is the 20th largest PAC in the U.S. funding candidates – and that these dollars are allocated not by party or platform but on a single issue: pledging allegiance to Israel.
Aren't you angry too?
Like many on the liberal-progressive part of the political spectrum, learning this information has been a painful awakening. For many Generation X and millennials, this information challenges our understanding of the world, politics, and interpersonal relationships.
The reality is that just as it’s painful for white folks in America to pull back the veil and see their role in personal and institutional white supremacy, it is also painful for Jewish folks raised in the mythology of Israel to honestly contend with the truth of how Palestinians are treated.
Yet, my experience since October 7 has been that only a small amount of Jewish folks in my life have been willing to see or acknowledge this difficult reality. I remember reading an observation that “this is what happens when generational trauma and white supremacy collide”. Can we contend with that collision?
Naturally, the recency of the Holocaust creates a deep-seated and understandable fear among so many Jews that leads them to say “never again”. Yet without a reckoning around the severe injustices and inequities that are fundamental to the existence of Palestinians living under Israeli control, too many Jewish folks cannot see that what Israel is doing is, in fact, terrorizing a group of civilians who are innocent of any crimes.
My friend, this is very much a form of “again”.
And yet, instead of holding up a mirror, our mainstream media is going hard on the stories about the unfortunate persistence of antisemitism – and using the broadest possible interpretation of it.
Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?
Is the phrase “from the river to the sea” inherently antisemitic?
Is calling for a ceasefire antisemitic?
Is calling this a genocide antisemitic?
Is there a difference between the left’s rebuke of Israel and the right's alignment with supremacists who shout, “Jews will not replace us”?
My fear is that with so little nuance around what is criticism of Israel and its actions versus the terrifying and genuine Nazism that has found a home in white supremacist circles, we are unable to create allegiances to defeat what is truly harmful and hateful as opposed to what is a reaction to an asymmetric and genocidal, U.S.-funded war on innocent civilians.
I am in no way arguing that antisemitism doesn’t exist – it most definitely does exist. It is on the rise, and I am afraid of that, too. Afraid for you, and afraid for me. Yet, if we can’t parse what is the calling out of decades of injustice from what is actual Jew hatred, I fear that the alliances that have already been frayed or severed may never be restored.
My belief is that the best path to defeating antisemitism, particularly among the left, is for American Jews to come to terms with the realities of the violence and dispossession that led to the creation of Israel, the unjust treatment of Palestinians in neighboring territories, the ways in which the United States has underwritten and trained with and learned from the IOF, and the undue amount of political power leveraged by organizations like AIPAC.
For a people who experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust, it is, of course, painful to acknowledge a shift from oppressed to oppressor. But solidarity is built from a place of brutal honesty about history, about identity, and about a shared desire for freedom.
If we truly want to see the end of antisemitism, it will require a difficult reckoning with the past that it seems only a small subset of American Jews have thus far shown a willingness to undertake.
Again, please know I understand fear.
I understand violence.
I understand oppression.
And I also understand that collective liberation requires truth.
Please join me in seeking the truth, no matter how painful.
We are here waiting for you.
Yours in hope,
A Black woman in America.
The "extremist behavior" you refer to is armed resistance born out of decades of desperation living under one of the most brutal and propagandized occupations of our time. An occupation that has stolen everything sacred to Palestinians. Do we look upon slave uprisings in the past as "extremist" or "terrorist" behavior? We cannot STILL be coddling—and almost begging—white folks to wake up. They need to wake the fuck up NOW, rude awakening and all.
Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the West have spoken out for decades about everything said in this article. WE have long been subjected to systemic silencing and vilification perpetuated by Zionist-influenced media outlets and governments. For decades, our voices have been marginalized and legitimate concerns dismissed, while a carefully crafted image of Israel has been propagated. This has led to the labeling of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians as extremists, terrorists, and other racist stereotypes that have been unilaterally accepted by many in American society.
The dehumanization and degradation experienced by these communities, including being referred to as animals or subhuman, is appalling and unacceptable. It is deeply troubling that such derogatory language has become normalized to the point where it is not even questioned by government officials, the media, or society at large. When individuals from the Arab or Palestinian communities dare to speak out against such injustices, they are often unjustly labeled as anti-Semitic, despite the fact that they themselves are Semitic people. The the irony in this situation, is that 97% of Jews worldwide are of European descent with little to no Semitic lineage. This misuse of the term "anti-Semitic" to silence legitimate criticism of Israel and its policies only serves to further perpetuate discrimination and suppress dissenting voices.
The so-called "extremist behavior" you mention plays into the tropes you've been conditioned to believe. The Palestinian resistance is not merely an act of violence, but rather a desperate response born out of decades of oppression, humiliation, dispossession, and systematic brutality inflicted upon Palestinians living under one of the most oppressive occupations in modern history. It is a manifestation of the profound despair and hopelessness experienced by a people who have endured relentless violations of their basic human rights and the theft of their land, resources, and dignity.
For generations, Palestinians have been subjected to relentless violence, murder, discrimination, and displacement at the hands of the occupying forces. Their homes have been demolished, their land confiscated, and their communities fragmented by illegal settlements and checkpoints. Basic necessities such as water, electricity, and healthcare are routinely denied to them, while their freedom of movement is severely restricted.
In such a context of pervasive injustice and deprivation, it is not surprising that some Palestinians have resorted to armed resistance as a means of self-defense and resistance against their oppressors. It is a desperate attempt to reclaim their dignity, assert their rights, and resist the relentless onslaught of violence and dispossession inflicted upon them by the occupying forces.
While I commend your article following your epiphany, there are more layers to this onion and how deep this conspiracy runs in US and global politics. Israel and the US are deeply entrenched in a corrupt web of political, corporate and geopolitical extortion that play a significant role in shaping the current reality for Palestinians and the Apartheid we have witnessed for the last 76 years.