Tag Archives: Palestinians

Strangers in a Strange Land

“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger: You were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

The Passover service reminds Jews that once we were slaves in Egypt. We also remember that not so long ago, millions of us were herded into concentration camps to be tortured, worked, or poisoned to death. These memories should encourage us to feel empathy for the people who are currently suffering under cruel regimes.

Most Americans are now aware that the Trump administration is a consistently cruel regime. Some of the meanest people Trump could find are running our government. Times are hard, and about to get harder, for anybody with little money. For immigrants, life has become not just hard but terrifying. Not much prevents ICE from disappearing any of them into some hellhole in El Salvador for no reason at all.

Jews left Egypt because Pharaoh had made life unbearable for us. But after our miraculous escape into the desert, some missed their old homes, especially the pomegranates and figs. We were free, but the migrant life brought us a new set of troubles. Few people leave home if they don’t have to. We love the landscapes, people, and communities where we grew up. If we can stay home and make a living in peace, that’s what most of us prefer to do. But if staying home means that our families are subject to violence, extreme poverty, or other forms of oppression, sometimes we have to leave.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, there were around 48 million immigrants in the USA in 2022. Some came because their relatives were here and could find jobs for them, or to study at our great universities. However, many of them were fleeing terrible conditions in their home countries. They had to leave. They crossed deserts, rivers, and mountain ranges to get to this country, where they hoped to be able to live in peace.

Immigrants look for work in sectors where there are labor gaps, in agriculture, health care, or construction. They include doctors and software engineers as well as farm workers and care providers. Together, they generated $4.6 trillion in economic output in 2022. Often they pay taxes without gaining the benefits citizens expect from the government. Without their youth and vigor, our country would not be able to support our aging population as it retires. We owe them a lot.

In addition to what US citizens gain in needed labor and new business ventures, we get a range of wonderful new food and music to enrich our lives. Anybody who visits a major city in the US can find and enjoy nearly every culture in the world. This has always been part of why most of us love this country: everybody is here. People from Iran and Iraq, China and Japan, Russia and Ukraine, manage to live together in America. Within a generation, they are as American as it gets.

Yet instead of welcoming these people who went through so much to get to our country, our government treats them like criminals. Democratic presidents have not done much better than Republicans in this regard. It’s easy to blame immigrants for situations that are clearly not their fault – like the American appetite for opioids, which has fed the growth of violent gangs worldwide. No American government wants to admit that our country’s cynical support for South and Central American dictators nurtured the drug trade and devastated the lives of their citizens. Yet we bear heavy responsibility for the brutal conditions that have made so many flee their homes.

The worst irony for many Jews this Passover is that another cruel regime causing tremendous suffering is the state of Israel. Jews who realize how badly Israel has treated Palestinians since the state was founded are struck with deep shame and horror. Most pro-Palestinian demonstrations include a strong showing of supportive Jews. We remember when we were the victims of cruel regimes. Now we must do whatever we can to stop the cruelty, even if the perpetrators of oppression and violence claim they’re doing it for our sake.

I would like to add two prayers to this year’s seder: May everyone in Israel/Palestine live together in peace someday. And may the United States learn to respect and protect all those strangers who honor us by coming to live here.

by Jane Collins
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But is it good for the Jews?

To quote Robert Burns: “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!”

Growing up in my argumentative Jewish family, I remember most political and cultural issues were subjected, at some point, to the question: but is it good for the Jews? This question was also the punchline of many jokes. I was born three years after the Holocaust, when my relatives remaining in Poland were massacred. I read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was 12. So I knew about a lot of events, places, and people that had not been good for the Jews. Not all members of my family believed in God. But every one of us believed that no matter where we lived, how thoroughly we acculturated, or how outwardly successful we became, our environment might at any moment become not good for the Jews. We assumed antisemitism was everywhere, perhaps well-hidden, but endemic. 

Israel was our hope. Every other country might reject or turn against us, but Israel would always let us in and protect us. Zionism was our strategy for long-term survival. The country was surrounded by enemies, its allies were self-serving and unreliable, but Israel was backed by God (and American military aid) and would prevail, like David against Goliath. 

What many American Jews are only now realizing is that over the past 75 years, Israel has become Goliath and the Palestinians have become David. All the military might is on Israel’s side. Arab countries have paid lip service to the cause of Palestinians without offering them much actual help. They are just pawns in the great game. World sympathy, which might have been a major factor in Israel’s favor after the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, has turned to anger because of Netanyahu’s brutal response. He has bombed most of Gaza to rubble and killed around 25,000 people, mostly women and children. Many more are sure to die of bombs, famine, thirst, and disease.

Now “my” people, only 80 years after being subject to genocide, are accused of committing genocide ourselves. Many Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora (the whole world outside Israel) respond indignantly that Hamas wants to wipe out all Jews in Israel, so Netanyahu is trying to wipe out Hamas instead. And besides, they say, Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields, so it’s impossible to kill Hamas militants without killing innocent people. It’s not our fault. We have no choice. It’s either them or us. If Israel is no longer safe for the Jews, nowhere is safe. So this carnage is good for the Jews around the world.

But the massive rise in antisemitism worldwide proves that the opposite is true. Seventy-five years of Israel’s terrible treatment of Palestinians – forcing Palestinians off their land, herding them into open-air prisons like Gaza in a virtual apartheid regime, depriving them of full citizenship in Israel, making a separate homeland all but impossible, meeting thrown rocks with bullets, finally telling two million Gazan residents to crowd into southern Gaza and then bombing southern Gaza – have had their predictable result. Nonviolent resistance has failed, with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement dismissed as antisemitic. Israel has left Palestinians with few options besides violent resistance, ie., Hamas. The many Palestinians who hate Hamas are afraid to say so in public. The thugs would torture and kill them and their families. Meanwhile, every innocent killed by Israeli bombs or siege conditions creates more recruits for Hamas. Hamas is not, as Israeli leaders keep calling it, a snake. It is a Hydra. Cut off one head, and more will grow in its place.

The hideous ambitions of Netanyahu give credence to South Africa’s claim of genocide. Meanwhile, the People of the Book have forgotten the words of one of our greatest teachers, Rabbi Hillel. When challenged by some joker to teach him the Torah while he stood on one foot, Hillel responded: “Do not do to others what you don’t want done to you. The rest is commentary.”

American Jews have pushed our government to support Israel no matter what it does. We should remember that we are Jewish before we are Zionist. What Israel is doing to Gazans goes against everything Judaism has always stood for. It is beyond horrible for Palestinians. It’s time more of us realized that it is also very bad for the Jews.