It has been impossible, since October 7th 2023 to avoid awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and many of us have become armchair experts on the situation. I am no exception, and have been horrified, haunted and sickened by the relentless images of slaughter and starvation coming out of Gaza. Until recently, though, I had never considered the suffering of Jewish people involved in this mess. It was much easier to plan this piece when my views were more polarised, but as I have read and watched, listened, learned and written notes over the past few weeks, it has become so much more complex, and dare I say, nuanced than I thought it could be.
When I say complex, I am not referring to the political reality in Israel and Palestine. As far as I can tell, the extent of Israel’s occupation of Palestine violates international law and represents injustice and oppression of the grossest kind.
The complexity and nuance that I am referring to is the systemic, and often vicious erasure of Jewish suffering since October 7th. I have been increasingly troubled by the tone of debate around Jewish people in this country as I watch disgraceful anti-Semitism creep its poisonous, strangling tentacles through our communities. While it has been so heartening to see the huge, worldwide empathy for the suffering of the Palestinian people, it seems that the cost of this is contempt and hatred towards our Jewish friends. I find this utterly unacceptable.
Despite my own view of Zionism as a failed and fatal project, I am able to empathise with the desire of Jewish people for a homeland, considering their many centuries of persecution. The longing for home surely must be one of our most universal, shared human feelings, yet for Jewish people, this yearning cannot even be whispered. I live in a country that was founded on the dispossession and genocide of innocent people, yet I am allowed to freely express my love for my homeland with impunity. I do not have to hide my children to keep them safe, as Aboriginal parents had to do for decades, but this is what Jewish parents are now considering in present-day Australia, and it seems that we are ok with this. In fact, we seem to take self-righteous pleasure in their fear.
I recently read a book that was recommended by someone I like and admire, but which was dismissed by someone I hold in equal regard. It was a collection of essays by Australian Jewish women in the creative arts, who were writing about how their lives have changed since October 7th 2023. What I read was haunting. Woman after woman, the words were the same: Where can I hide? Where can I hide? Where can I hide my children? How can I hide my children? The panic, the breathless, rising terror amongst these women was heartbreaking. This was Melbourne, 2023.
It wasn’t just fear, it was absolute bewilderment and shock that people they had thought of as friends and like-minded allies shut down and silenced them about the terror inflicted on October 7th. One woman was stood down from her position as artist-in-residence for posting images of Israeli hostages. Another bereaved woman was told to “stop playing the victim”. Even before Israel’s retaliation, while people in Thornbury were still phoning Israel to see if family members were alive, posters of kidnapped people were torn down, and Jewish businesses were defaced. There was no sympathy, no revulsion at the rapes of young women at the Nova Festival, no “I’ll ride with you” as we saw in the wake of nasty Islamophobic attacks a few years ago. It was as though the mask of progressiveness suddenly dropped, making visible the anti-Semitism just below the surface.
It’s absurd to equate the suffering of the Jewish women in the book to the industrial scale of murder being perpetrated by the Israeli government on Palestine, but I don’t understand how silencing the Australian Jewish women is anything other than a perpetuation of the violence we claim to abhor. My immediate family (grandad and upwards) were directly impacted by the genocide perpetrated by the British in Ireland over many years and we were tacitly encouraged as children to support the IRA. We had family friends who collected donations to support guerilla work in Ireland and the UK. However, if a group of Protestant women from that time wrote a series of essays on how fear of the IRA had impacted them, I don’t think that I could dismiss their suffering as whiny and selfish. I hold England and its government entirely responsible for the atrocities committed against my people, and nothing can alter that fact. However, acknowledging this does not prevent me from empathising with Protestant mothers whose children were murdered. Why are we so unable to hold awareness of more than one reality in our minds without silencing and dismissing that of someone with whom we disagree?
I noticed two other things as I read these essays. One was that many of the writers seemed a bit deluded about factors contributing to the October 7th atrocities. This reminded me of the way I used to think about Australia. It is difficult for the descendants of colonisers to accept that the privileges they enjoy were paid for by dispossessed people, yet I am not the only person in Australia who is unwilling to stop living on stolen land.
The second thing I noticed, was that most of the writers had been “cultural Jews” before October 7th, but had quickly hardened into a much stronger Jewish identity. This increased polarisation is the core of what we, on the left, should be resisting, not fomenting. We are told that we must pick one side, or risk social annihilation, but what if both sides kill babies and small children? We are then forced to choose the side that kills fewer babies. How do we reconcile our choice to actively support a group that kills any babies? We reframe this side into heroic freedom fighters and shout louder so as not to hear the screams of Ariel and Kfir Bibas, or the raped and mutilated girls at the Nova Festival. If you are rightly horrified by images of dead Palestinian children, how is it that the sight of Shani Louk, face down on the back of a ute with four wild-eyed men provokes only sneering dismissal? If some Israeli innocents are acceptable collateral damage, where does that leave us in our condemnation of violence? I am not arguing that you must avoid taking sides. It is clear that the worldwide movements in support of Palestine are having a powerful and positive impact on the fortunes of that broken country. I am arguing that in doing so, your claim to clean hands is hollow, and by attacking, silencing, and rejecting your Jewish friends and colleagues, you are feeding the very racism you claim to oppose.
The people who create and benefit from wars need you to forget that there are individual people on both sides. Take care that you do not help them do their evil work.
Further reading:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/zionism-anti-zionism-doxxing-and-whatsapp-zio600-group/103472344
Gay Taylor 