America Needs to Stop Filtering Their Support of Israel Through the Lense of the Holocaust
We Need to Learn From Our Own Crimes of Genocide Against Indigenous People and African People
At least 22,722 people killed and 58,166 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.*
Why is America trying to correct their disturbingly late response to Nazism by supporting Israel? Most of us recognize that October 7, 2023, Hamas’ attack on Israel, was a devastating day for Jewish people. A majority of Americans agree that Jewish people deserve a safe haven, yet many of us are disgusted seeing the people of Israel fall prey to their own far-right Zionist government. Israel’s far-right extreme Zionist apartheid regime is dangerous and destructive for both Jewish people and Palestinian people.
I find it catastrophic, as well as disgusting, that the American government would support Israel’s destruction of Gaza, especially considering America’s own grotesque history. I wrote a piece on Medium titled Ancestors of Enslavers Refuse to Acknowledge Their Genealogy, and looking at America’s response to Israel, I realize just how far we are as people from acknowledging any of our role in history.
America’s Irony
The agenda Hitler created to destroy Jewish people was linked to religious differences, anti-semitism in Vienna, Jewish economic power, conspiracy theories, and biological differences. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech in Paris saying the notion of a Palestinian people was artificial: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.”
At the time of Smotrich’s comments, Spring of 2023, 40 Israelis had been killed in Palestinian attacks, but more than 200 Palestinians had just been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The European Union had, also, just declared that extremist racist Zionist ideology governs the parties of the current Israeli government.
I do feel a little uneasy about drawing the correlation between the Holocaust and Gaza, but one can’t help comparing and contrasting America’s response supporting Israel to their slow movement in stopping the genocide of Jews during World War II. Watching America try to correct their mishandling of Hitler by supporting Benjamin Netanyah is one of the greatest ironies of America’s foreign policy, both responses are convoluted with economic concerns, xenophobia, and racism before humanitarianism.
Jewish Voice for Peace is calling for Apartheid Israel to take down the wall created on Palestinian soil. Their goal is that Israel’s jails, prisons, and detention centers become emptied and dismantled while Palestinian refugees will be able to reunite with their families and communities: “We picture Palestinians — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — living with their inalienable rights respected, building schools and hospitals and planting olive groves with the resources they need.”
America’s History of Genocide
American attitudes towards foreign policy and war continue to shape their response as oppressive and focused on economic gain. If America actually focused on right and wrong, the government would have learned over time from their own crimes of genocide. The lense in which they look at the Israeli/Palestine situation would be clear.
America needs to take steps to understanding their own history of genocide to indigenous people and Africans before they jump into protecting Israel and rectifying their part in the Holocaust. Even as late as 1830, American government policy was to “remove” all native people from the area east of the Mississippi River — decimating thousands along the path. 130 million indigenous Americans died in massacres, rapes, forced starvations, wars, epidemics and slavery at the hands of America’s European settlers. The American government has done nothing in the form of reparations to rectify the murder of two million Africans during the transatlantic slave trade and shortly after their arrival to America. Reparations for land theft still goes unsettled with the Native American population.
America has not learned from their own history of colonization. The government is still governed under the philosophy that colonizers are inherently peaceful and evolved, while the colonized are inherently stubborn, petulant and violent. History has taught the American government nothing as they continue to support oppression for their own gain, or guilt.
Citizens of Gaza did take somewhat peaceful action with the Great March of Return demonstrations in 2018 demanding the end of the Israeli blockade and the right of return for refugees. It seems if Palestine would have had more western support the Israeli government would not be in a position to destroy Palestine — even western media has been unbearably skewed towards Israel’s Zionist agenda. Jimmy Carter was ostracized from the democratic party for his book, Peace Not Apartheid, in 2006. The American government has been determined to support Israel as an apartheid state since they started colonizing Palestine in 1967.
If there is any question about Israel’s desire to destroy Palistinines, one should ask themselves why they have destroyed, dismantled, and killed the citizens of the West Bank. The West Bank has not been governed by Hamas, Israel occupation maintained control over the West Bank. Citizens of Gaza had only been allowed to travel to the West Bank for critical medical treatment, or the need to visit, assist or support a family member who is at an end-of-life stage of an illness or disease. People were only allowed to travel from the West Bank to Gaza if they pledged to relocate to Gaza.
A Democracy in the Middle East
Watching and reading everything available, starting with the most simple Wikipedia searches of Gaza and Israel, to reading everything out of the United Nations, including UN experts convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide, I have only become more disheartened and disgusted by America’s support of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The UN report urges making drinking water available to the two million people as “an essential to human life.” The United Nations and the Human Rights Watch Organization have both declared Gaza as an open air prison for the last fifteen years due to Israel’s sweeping restrictions on residents leaving Gaza — humans left to rot in a damaging economy with no means to leave, limited opportunities, and limited supplies to the area through restricting movement of people and goods.
America’s original support of Israel was based on welcoming a democracy in the Middle East — democracies must reflect core principles such as equality, liberty and freedom of expression. Obviously, Israel’s far-right Apartheid government is not representative of a democracy.
Most of America, especially white America, is very privileged and protected, so it is easy for us to take a blind eye to war and rage. Our privilege blinds us to the realization that terrorism almost always stems from oppression — persecution, poverty, discrimination, lack of human rights, and living under military occupation, lead to violence
Revisiting McCarthyism — this Time it’s Not About Everyone Being Pro-Communist, Rather Anti-Semitic
If you haven’t had a chance to read the congressional House hearings with the Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania presidents, take a minute to read the transcript. It reeks of McCarthyism all over again, only instead of everyone being pro-communist they are anti-semitic. The university presidents stumbled to condemn whether it was a threat for students to chant in favor of an intifada, they were questioned about why they hadn’t punished the students involved or eliminated them from attending the campus.
The presidents, whose jobs were on the line, had been overly lawyerized and couldn’t even formulize their answers appropriately — trying desperately to connect long standing universities policies to freedom of speech with their response to students’ voices. They mistakenly, in today’s climate, tried to talk about their concern for the Jewish population and Jewish students in context to their concern for all religious and racially diverse groups of students on their campuses. The school presidents noted that Islamophobic incidents have increased, but expressing worry about all students came across as anti-semitic to the congressional panel.
Aligning with White Supremacist
All of a sudden, I see the same white supremacist that brandish the American flag making room for the Israeli flag. I keep asking myself what does this mean? The answer lies in supremacists seeing a shared ideology between Israel and the United States: Both the United States and Israel are created by European settlers colonizing states with government ideologies of white supremacy. Both states are run by white people who maintain their power through exploiting, killing, and displacing Black, brown, and Indigenous communities.
If this seems unrealistic to you, keep asking yourself: Why would white supremacists be aligning themselves with our left-democratic president? The answer is clear — they now see a shared ideology with him. An ideology that does not value Black and brown lives. The American government continues to reiterate this ugly ideology through their white appeasing politics and lack of action or concern about brown lives — Where were the congressional hearings about the three Pakistani students shot in Vermont at the end of November — the inquiries about their safety?
America is Supporting the Murder of Children
For my daughter who watched her brother become disabled overnight from a rare severe brain disease, the siblings she is witnessing scramble to the aid of their sisters and brothers in Gaza is very devastating. Through tears, my daughter speaks of her brother gripping her when he broke, scrambling to find a way to fit into time and space — he thought if he stayed connected to her, he would still exist in the world. My daughter thinks of the moments he shadowed her, and how much she desperately needed me (her mother) to make sense of their shattered existence. How can anyone turn away from the children of Gaza while watching their dire need to find their mothers — how can they survive this trauma without their mothers?
America is supporting the destruction of Gaza and 40% of Gaza’s population is under fourteen — out of the 22,700+ people killed, 40% have been under the age of fourteen, over 9,000 innocent children have been murdered. I pass by elementary schools and middle schools every day and think of these children while my mind won’t even process toddlers and preschoolers. The median age of Gaza’s population is just eighteen years old, and a majority of people surviving will be unfortunately initiated into the world of the disabled — loss of limbs, seizure disorders from head injuries, severe PTSD etc.
In 2006, when Gaza held their election, Hamas was voted into power with forty percent of people voting. Not only was a majority of Gaza not even born during the election, any person being held in Gaza 34 and under did not even vote for Hamas — over eighty percent of Gaza did not even vote in the 2006 election. Approximately, only eight percent of the population of Gaza voted Hamas into power (forty percent of the population that actually voted in that 2006 election).
*In the few hours I spent writing this article the death toll climbed from 22,400 to 22,722.
Consider donating to help the children — all three organizations are very reputable:
