|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Since the barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas, the terrorist government of Gaza, the world — including Livermore and the Bay Area — have been singularly focused on the resulting war and its terrible cost to Gaza and the Palestinians.
The resulting anger and division, antisemitism and Islamophobia is tearing communities apart. It doesn’t have to be that way.
We can, together, mourn for all those who have died in this terrible war. They were parents, children, brothers, sisters, friends, community members. No matter who they were, how old they were, how they lived, or how they died, every absence leaves a hole where there was once someone to hold, someone to live life with. That grief is something our community can share.
The solutions to the war between Israel and Hamas will happen there, not here. Arguing over the rights and wrongs of the situation will not change anything. But we can learn from each other. We can listen and hear each other’s reality, even when it is not our own. We can share knowledge and context, even when we disagree. We can tell our personal stories and listen to those of others.
This is no easy thing to do. For me, these past weeks have been agonizing. Israel and Jewish history writ large are personal, part of my identity. I believe that Israel has the right to exist. This past March, I celebrated Purim in Israel. It was the only time in my life that I did not need to explain the holiday to others; celebrating the holiday was the norm.
Yet during that trip, I also demonstrated against the government and visited the West Bank, including a refugee camp. Believing that Israel has the right to exist does not mean supporting bad political actors there any more than it does here in the U.S.
All of that is part of my personal truth and my story.
Over the past weeks, I have been struck by how little people know about Jews, Judaism and the Jewish place in world history. I have been struck by the lack of knowledge of how the European colonial powers shaped the entire Middle East. I have been struck by how some words have been flipped on their heads in order to delegitimize Israel’s existence — as opposed to supporting a two-state solution in the region.
When people lack knowledge, past cultural assumptions and implicit biases take hold. The remedy is knowledge — facts and context, as opposed to personal experience.
Over the past quarter-century, as part of two graduate programs, I have formally studied Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, and the historical and geographical context of Israel and the Middle East. (During that time, I also studied Islam and the larger history of the Middle East to a lesser degree. However, out of respect, I would defer to others speak about those subjects and to the Palestinian lived experience.) I would welcome the opportunity to have those conversations and to build bridges, whether that be tomorrow, next week or next year.
Regardless, I invite anyone who wants some basic knowledge about Jews to look at my Substack page (https://questionassumptions.substack.com) to discuss these issues online. In one forum or another, let’s build understanding among each other.
Editor’s note: Trish Munro is a former member of the Livermore City Council (2018-22). She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from U.C. Berkeley, is the author of “Coming of Age in Jewish America” (Rutgers University Press) and has been a member of Congregation Beth Emek for more than 40 years.
Utter Depravity
Jack S Cohen
Dec 6
In their massive invasion into Israel on Oct 7, a Saturday and a holiday, Simchat Torah (Celebration of the Torah), there were only skeleton defenses. Some 1,500 Hamas terrorists plus some 500 regular Palestinian civilians carried out the most depraved murders of 1,300 innocent civilians. In 22 settlements and villages around the Gaza envelope they murdered, burnt and destroyed.
I mourn the death of German Israeli Shani Louk, a beautiful 23 year old woman, who was dancing at the Nova peace music festival at kibbutz Re’em. She was raped, driven into Gaza and paraded around naked in the back of a truck and then decapitated. Some 360 people were randomly shot down at that festival, some 30 or so who found haven in a shelter were gunned down and hand grenades were thrown in. Only 3 survived that massacre.
On kibbutz Be’eri, where the worst massacre took place, some 200 people were murdered in the most sadistic way. One of the worst stories that I can hardly write about, is that the terrorists put a baby in an oven and burned it to to death. Its body was found and when it was examined at the Abu Kabir Forensics Institute they found not only the burn marks of the heating element on its back, but also that it had been alive since it breathed in the smoke from its own burning. I also saw the decapitated burnt body of a young girl perhaps 14 or 15. What depravity.
Women were gang raped, their genitals shot. Their arms and legs and even their breasts cut off. A pregnant woman was cut open and her fetus destroyed. Families of parents and children were tied together and set on fire. These incidents were recorded by the terrorists own cameras and testified to by the pathologists at the Abu Kabir Forensics Institute. This was not a spontaneous action, but some of ghe terrorists carried written orders that included the rape of girls and women.This has nothing to do with Palestinian self-determination, but only with terrorism and hatred.
In the 1940s, over 700,000 Arabs were expelled from their homes (called the Nakba). Between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning.
Since the 1940s, far more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. And in 2023, over 2/3 of the civilians killed by Israel are women and children. Please research the Nakba before making any conclusions. Have a great weekend everyone.