I was a nice Jewish girl. I went to synagogue on holy days and to Hebrew School three times a week through high school. I believed that another Holocaust could happen at any time, and that only Israel could save the Jewish people. I was a Zionist. Now I support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which seeks to pressure Israel economically into lifting its oppression of the Palestinians. Some BDS founders were anti-Semites. The movement has evolved as more Jews have joined it. What happened to change my mind? I spent a year in Israel.

What shocked me in Israel was the attitude of most Jewish Israelis toward Arabs. It was pretty much the same attitude racist white Americans have toward black people. Arabs were different, and lesser. They could be treated as second-class citizens, or isolated in impoverished bantustans like black South Africans under apartheid. 

After World War II, the Allied powers offered refuge to European Jews who survived the Holocaust in a country that was already home to the Palestinians. Some land was bought, some stolen. Arabs were understandably angry. Jews were understandably paranoid. This was a recipe for disaster for both peoples.

Now everyone in the Middle East is the walking wounded. Jews can reel off lists of atrocities committed by Arabs. Arabs can list as many atrocities committed by Jews. Both groups have bombed civilian targets, murdered innocents, and marginalized peacemakers. Both groups deny that they share blame for the ongoing slaughter.

Israel claims that it is surrounded by people who want to wipe it off the map, so the only possible response is to turn every Israeli into a soldier and arm the country to the teeth. America has supported this militarization with more than $3 billion in military aid per year. I do not believe this has increased security for anyone, Jewish or not. Every time you kill someone, you create new enemies out of all their friends and relatives. How can that make anyone safer?

A nation formed in response to oppression has become an oppressor. People who should appreciate the need for safe havens have denied all safety to Arabs in the lands they still occupy. People whose ancestors were forced to flee their homes are evicting others from theirs. People who should be tearing down walls have built them instead. The people who made the desert bloom are bulldozing ancient olive groves. This all makes me think of something a Jewish poet is supposed to have said a couple of thousand years ago: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36-37)

I believe the Jewish people are in danger of losing the soul of our religion in return for gaining control of the land of Israel. It’s not a good trade-off. I don’t support BDS because I hate my people; I do it because I love them, and I want them to heal from the spirit-wounds of fear and hatred.

The war-mongers want us to look at one another and see Zionists or Arab zealots, patriots or terrorists. We must look past these imaginary classifications and see the reality: heart-broken human beings who want only to live and let live.