If You "Stand With Israel" Right Now, You're Standing For Genocide
Telling the world you stand with Israel at this moment is a provocative and racist statement that supports genocide. It's certainly free speech and protected, but it should not be socially insulated.
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In the early hours on January 25, two Westchester County stores were vandalized. Both stores had signs in their windows reading “We stand with Israel.” Both storefronts were defaced with the words “Genocide supporters” spray painted on them. The incidents are being investigated as possible “hate crimes.”
Never one to let a cynical opportunity pass him by, the former and hopeful-future Congressman Mondaire Jones immediately tweeted his outrage at this “antisemitic” attack. Jones, of course, is simply taking it as a given that antisemitism was the motive and that anyone would see it that way.
The problem is, there is no evidence at all that this was an antisemitic incident. In his tweet about the incident, Jones states that the two stores were “Jewish-owned,” and maybe they are. But that’s not evident from the store’s names or nature: The Scoop Shop, which sells ice cream and frozen yogurt and Cheryl’s Closet, a clothing store.
Let me be very clear at the outset. I am not in any way condoning or justifying the vandalism of these two stores.
But the act is hardly as egregious as American support for genocide. No one is getting killed because of a few spray-painted words. But support for Israel, which has long been causing great harm to Palestinians under siege and occupation, is now, since October 7, literally killing tens of thousands of innocent people.
If you fly a Confederate flag in your store’s window and someone spray-paints “Racism supporter” on your storefront, that’s not a racist attack, it’s an attack on racism, albeit a debatable one. Willful property damage is an act of violence. That’s not completely mitigated by the provocative nature of the signs in the window. But it is also far less of a crime and a far smaller degree of violence than what these two stores were actively promoting.
Jones’ accusation of antisemitism should be dismissed out of hand as the amoral and corrupt attempt to twist the entire concept of that hateful scourge. At this point, such an accusation is not even the collapsing of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. It is actually saying that opposition to genocide is antisemitic, a concept that should be anathema and abhorrent to any thinking person, and is, or should be, especially repulsive to any Jew with any consciousness of what was done to us in 20th century Europe.
This is a thought that often disturbs me when I drive past a shul, a Jewish community center, or any other site displaying these “We Stand With Israel” signs. At one time, this was a policy and political debate, and even in those times, I was dismayed at what it must feel like to be a Palestinian and to see such signs. It was an expression of Jewish nationalism that wanted to blind itself to the apartheid nature of Israel and the crimes associated with the nature of apartheid.
But now, it is, in fact, support for genocide and that is a huge leap past what must be socially acceptable, just like the Confederate flag. Standing with Israel before October 7 could have meant a variety of things. And on that day, it could well have meant support for many people who had been hurt or had lost loved ones to the brutal Hamas attack, and for a nation of millions who were traumatized. You didn’t have to be Jewish to have been a victim of that attack or to have been scarred in some way by it, in Israel or outside of it.
But since then, Israel has done nothing but slaughter the people of Gaza. Fighting Hamas has been very clearly secondary to destroying the civilian infrastructure of Gaza and attacking the civilian population in an effort to end the “Palestine question” once and for all.
The overwhelming targeting of civilians, the intentional starvation of the people, the blocking of humanitarian aid, medicine, water, and other life-sustaining items, the intentional targeting of sites Israel itself has ordered Gazans to flee to as well as mosques, schools, hospitals, UN sites, and…well pretty much every square inch of Gaza. All of this amounts to the greatest war crimes seen on the planet in decades.
Debate whether it qualifies as genocide may go on for years, but stating that one “Stands With Israel” is saying you support the murder of over 10,000 children so far. Thousands of maimed, well over 25,000 orphans created, and unthinkable trauma that is certain to cause even more pain and suffering for everyone between the river and the sea for many decades to come.
We enjoy our freedom of speech in the United States. But it is a well-established principle that speech may be free from government interference, but it is not free from social consequence. Again, in case anyone has already forgotten what I said before, this does not mean vandalism is OK. I wouldn’t say it was justified even if there was a Confederate flag in a window or even something more explicitly supporting slavery or racism.
But if you put something like that in your store window, or even at your home, you should expect anger in response. The pro-Israel community, whether it is Jewish, Christian, or atheist, seems to feel there should be no backlash for publicly supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza. I call it genocide, as do many. But quibble with the words all you want, even Israel agrees that the death toll from Gaza’s Ministry of health is accurate, and that also means some three-quarters of the victims are women and children. Given that most of the men are either going to be elderly or simply not part of Hamas, it’s clear whom Israel has been killing for the past three-plus months.
People flying the Israeli flag and proudly posting signs expressing their support for Israel while it’s doing this seem to believe they should be able to do so comfortably, even while the communities they are a part of and many of the institutions they support are conducting witch hunts against those who oppose the genocide of the Palestinian people. I beg to differ.
According to a local report about the incident in Westchester County, “The incident has left many in the Jewish community shaken and fearful.” I am sad they feel this way. I don’t want anyone to be afraid in their own communities.
But I also see no reason that people should feel comfortable about supporting genocide. Or whatever one would call what is happening in Gaza, and what is slowly accelerating in the West Bank as well. If you want to stand for genocide, you should be ready for the fact that such a stance is going to offend and anger many of your neighbors.
Israel, like most nation-states, has a long history of criminal activity. In that regard, it has not been exceptional, and, as a settler-colonial enterprise it follows in a long line of some of the most horrific crimes in human history.
But what it is doing today brings Israeli criminality to a new level in its history, one rivaled only by the Nakba in 1947-49. Supporting this behavior should not be something one can do comfortably, though the right to do so is certainly due each individual.
Again, violence is not the answer, even the relatively minor violence of defacing a storefront. But every one of those signs, every obscene chant of “four more years” in response to protesters calling out Joe Biden for his support of genocide, every statement that Israel has the right to slaughter Palestinians at will, every dime we as taxpayers pay in support of this abomination is a far greater act of violence. Somehow, we think that’s OK but some spray paint on a window is intolerable.
That is a sign of a moral compass that has been completely destroyed. Maybe phony “liberals” like Mondaire Jones might consider being on the right side of history instead of clutching their pearls at a minor act of violence while defending enormous ones.
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