“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”
JVL Introduction
Arielle Angell is the editor in chief of the valuable US magazine Jewish Currents. She has posted a moving and nuanced attempt, full of Jewish sensibility, to show how to respond to the current horror in Gaza and the terrible events in Southern Israel that led up to it.
Her letter reflects closely JVL’s views on the evolving tragedy.
She shows compassion for everyone who is suffering but is clear-eyed about the history that has led up to it and bemoans our failure to stop it.
“Our Jewish movements for Palestine were not powerful enough to stop other Jews from gunning down Palestinians in peaceful marches at the Gazan border fence, or to keep Palestinians from being fired, harassed, and sued for speaking the truth about their experience or-God forbid-advocating the nonviolent tactic of boycott.”
She excoriates those politicians in Israel and the US who call for Palestinian blood in direct, genocidal language – we would add too many UK politicians and commentators to her list.
MC
This article was originally published by Jewish Currents on Thu 12 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”
The editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents on recommitting to our movements in this moment.
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Beautiful and so well written. It speaks to my distress and inability to name it well
I have been struggling to reconcile the conflicting emotions that this great tragedy has raised, just as so many others are whose idea of what it is to to be persuades them to be a Jew has led them to support the Palestinian in their desperate need to be free of Israeli oppression and the threat of annihilation that oppression implies
I hardly know who not to be angry with when thinking of those who have had any direct involvement in the creation of all this horror: the Israeli government fighting Hamas, the mighty powers who support Israel in that fight, and Hamas itself
And the distress I feel that comes with the realisation that Jews in Israel have now in this short space of time had to experience the degree of fear, pain,and grief that the government they have willingly supported for so long has been inflicting on the Palestinians for so many decades, is almost physically painful
Nor can I help thinking of those Jews who for all any-one in Hamas knows were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause who have had their lives destroyed by this brutal attack
Some will say, Israel has only got what it deserves
No people, who ever they are, deserve to have this kind of suffering inflicted upon them, and Hamas from its own long experience of defending Gazans should know that
Some people will say, this proves the Palestinians are as bloodthirsty as Israel has always claimed they are
This is to ignore the unbelievable patience that the great majority of individual Palestinians have displayed in the light of the violence and bloodshed they have had to live with that Israel has caused with great deliberacy
But it is harder now to make these things clear than it has been, because Hamas has given
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Thank you for publishing this intelligent and humane piece.
Powerful article.
The problem with the public debate, is that very few people know about the history, from pre Balfour Declaration of Israel and Palestine until this last horrendous weekend.
I weep for everyone.
This might seem trivial compared to the current situation, but how can we build a new national consciousness ?
It seems that currently, both peoples – Jews and Palestinian Arabs – have a view of they’re past that negates the other. The former think of themselves as the only original inhabitants, claiming they’re homeland, and believe it to of historically been exclusively Jewish, while the latter sometimes downplay any Jewishness. Is there not a middle ground that can acknowledge all the different peoples who have been there, and one that can draw more nuanced conclusions about the modern inhabitants, with the goal of creating a collective consciousness ?
Indeed, and I hope to share this widely.