A couple of weeks ago I re-posted on both my Instagram and Facebook stories something shared by Jewish Voice for Peace. It stated that Israel had responded to the initial ceasefire agreement by killing another 85 people (this number was a conservative estimate and it subsequently climbed much higher). The next day, when I opened up my laptop I was greeted with a few messages from various family members in America telling me I would ‘burn in hell’, that ‘my father would be ashamed of me’ and that he would have ‘disowned me with these views.’ (Except, these are not views. These are facts. But I won’t get into that right now.) One person asked me ‘what has happened to you?’

Let me add some context and history. I am not Jewish and was not raised Jewish. My father was Jewish and his own parents escaped Poland and settled in Chicago, managing to bring over large numbers of people. Many in my family perished in the Holocaust and going to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a young person had a profound effect on me. I grew up with Anne Frank as a constant companion as a child and teenager, and as an adult, one of my favourite and wisest of books became An Interrupted Life – 1941-1943 – The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum. She is far less known than Anne Frank (which always shocks me) but lived on the other side of Amsterdam and died in a concentration camp. I even chose one of Etty’s phrases as the title of my memoir, The Sky Within.

After school, I worked on a kibbutz in Israel and went back a few times in the next years to visit Israeli friends and explore the region. At university, I had a big Israeli flag on my wall, wore a necklace that had my name in Hebrew on it and started exploring my Jewish roots more. And then I took a course alongside Anthropology entitled Politics, Economy and Society in the Middle East. I remember sitting in these lectures, my eyes wide open as the history and culture of this region opened up before me, a turbulent, stained map. And I realised something during that year: that Israel was deeply problematic. It pained me to admit this to myself – I had thrown myself into the Israeli dream and loved it and what it stood for with an unbridled fervour. But this door had been opened, and the more I read and researched, the more I realised I had been naïve. I had only seen one side of this troubled story.

I spoke to my father about it more and more. We clashed terribly when we talked about it, but my Dad was full of humour and good grace, and we never fell out about it. His favourite saying was I may not always agree with you, but I’ll fight to the end for you to have your say. Dad wasn’t religious and never went to Synagogue, but culturally, he was deeply attached to Judaism and the state of Israel.

Fast forward many years from that idealistic university student with her Israeli flags and Hebrew necklace and I wonder what he would say about the genocide and persecution of the Palestinian people (which, as we know – or if we’re willing to really look – pre-dates October 7th by many decades). Perhaps we would still clash. And though I’ll never know for sure, I can’t believe he would condone this. And he certainly wouldn’t have disowned me. I feel the same about Anne and Hetty. Their words, wisdom and humanity have been stamped in indelible marker on my heart and soul. I know these people. They are my friends. And I cannot believe they would be alright with their descendants doing the same to another people what was done to their people. I do not want the end of Israel, I want peace in the region. And peace cannot begin with what has been taking place, and continues to take place.

Gabor Maté is a Hungarian Jew, Holocaust survivor, writer and psychologist whose work I have respected for some time. When I saw this on Instagram recently, I thought yes. Thank you Gabor. Thank you for speaking this horrifying, devastating truth.

And I also thought: I am proud of my Jewish heritage. And I do not and cannot support the continued persecution of the Palestinian people. And I know that both of these things can be true at the same time.

Thank you for reading this. It has taken a while for me to pluck up enough courage to write these words. I know some people won’t agree with what I’ve written here, and that’s ok. I just ask you to be respectful and kind if you would like to respond to this and pause before doing so.

Me working on a kibbutz near Rehovot, Israel in 1996

(Credit to Nazar Hrabovyi for the header image)

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