".... Yes, there are Israelis—including our Israeli family members—who strenuously oppose what is being done in Gaza, but it is clear that they represent a disturbingly small minority. The reality is that Israeli society has, to a concerningly widespread degree, been radicalized, such that it is beginning to display characteristics of the societies that have facilitated genocides in the past—including, to just come right out and say it, the society that committed genocide against our people. And this gets to the real crux of my letter.
Growing up, every aspect of my Jewish identity was connected to the Holocaust: through stories we were told by Grandpa about his childhood in Germany; the trip we took with him to Treblinka and Auschwitz; books we read like Maus and The Diary of Anne Frank; movies we watched like Schindler’s List and Life Is Beautiful; songs we sang like “Ani Ma’amin” and “I Still Believe”; visits we made to the Holocaust Museum and Yad Vashem; and a million other everyday comments at Sunday School, Hebrew School, Passover, family get-togethers, and more. In so many ways, it was instilled in me that there’s nothing worse than supporting the perpetrators of genocide, nothing more cowardly than staying silent in the face of genocide, and nothing more virtuous than standing up against genocide.
And I’m so grateful for this! It’s a credit to you and our family and our Jewish community that “Never Again” was the morality that I was taught as a child and that has influenced so many of my choices as an adult...
But I need you to try. I need you to step out of your echo chamber for a moment. I need you to at least consider the possibility that what Israel is doing to Gaza is, in practice if not scale, what was done to our ancestors. In short, I need you to be the parent I have always looked up to. The role model who taught me right from wrong. The mother who taught me to say “Never Again.”
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