"No longer...part of Klal Yisrael"
On staying true to my Jewish and human values, rejecting my supposed excommunication from the Jewish people
Hello, dear readers: Thank you as always for all your support. I am sorry for not writing here more frequently since October 7. Prose continues to mostly fail me in this moment. I’ve been focused on amplifying the voices of those Palestinians on the ground who are living through, documenting, displaying, and reporting these unending horrors, in hopes that someone, anyone in this viciously, monstrously apathetic and heartless world will care and do something, anything: Plestia, Motaz, Hind, Bisan, Yousef, Ahmed, Yara, and so many more.
I did manage to place a guest column in the Honolulu Star-Adverstiser, the highest circulation newspaper in Hawaii, about our Jewish bloc’s November 4 sit-in at Senator Brian Schatz’s (D-HI) office—a so-called “progressive Jew” who refused to meet with us. Hope he read this and felt ashamed, I want to say, but it’s clear he has no shame.
Schatz could only smirk silently when bird-dogged for SEVERAL MINUTES by some of the same activists who sat in at his office on November 4th. HE COULD NOT BE BOTHERED TO OPEN HIS SMIRKING MOUTH.
[Video Description: a small group of activists bird-dog Senator Brian Schatz through the halls of Congress and up a set of stairs about his complicity in Israel’s genocide. He smirks and says nothing as they question him and ask why he is not accountable to his constituents, the majority of whom support a cease-fire.]
Yesterday I marched with hundreds to “Genocide Joe” Biden’s house in Delaware. The only time I feel alive in this moment is in the presence of others who care, visibly (whether with their bodies or online), people who share my outrage and my horror at what is happening with our tax dollars.
[Video description: a sped-up video of a large group of protestors, including many kids and families, marching to Genocide Joe’s house.]
I have never been a big believer in American “democracy.” I’ve always known it was a scam, that elected officials are by and large serving the moneyed lobbies that pay them, not their constituents, but the disconnect has never been so starkly clear. My prayer is that this disconnect results in a long-overdue revolution in the settler colonial United States. May it be so. May we make it so.
[Image description: a graphic shared on Instagram showing how most Democratic and Republican voters want a ceasefire, but hardly anyone in Congress supports one.]
And then there is the additional horror that this genocidal state is genociding in the name of the Jews around the world. As a Jewish human, I must renounce this weaponization with everything I have.
Jerusalem Post editor Avi Mayer wrote last week (Was it just last week? It feels like months ago.) that anti-Zionist Jews are not really Jews. We are no longer Jews. We must be excommunicated from Klal Yisrael, according to him. Who knew that excommunication was even a thing in Judaism?
“While they may still technically be Jewish due to their parentage or conversion, while they may lead superficially Jewish lives, we can no longer consider them part of Klal Yisrael,” he wrote.
See, this is the thing: if being a part of Avi Meyer’s Klal Yisrael means being down with genocide; if it means being ethnically affiliated with a so-called progressive Jewish politician who smirks at the mention of genocide; if it means being part of the same “tribe” of the 100 Zionist doctors who wrote a letter urging the bombing of hospitals in Gaza, which is leading to premature babies dying as I write this because there is no electricity and fuel to power their incubators; if it means being in any way connected to the settlers drooling over the annexation of Gaza whose soil is drenched the blood of children and covered with human bodies; then yeah, I am good with my supposed excommunication from Klal Yisrael.
But honestly, I think it’s the other way around. Zionism, which has only been around for about 150 years, is but a blip in millenia of Jewish history. May it be those who espouse this vile and deathly ideology of necropolitics who will be conscribed to the dustbin of our collective story. May future generations of Jews be horrified that such a thing ever existed. I don’t know if I will ever live to see such a future, but I’m going to do everything I can to make it a reality.
I disavow any “Klal Yisrael” that rejects the halakhic principle of pikuach nefesh, or the vital importance of saving lives. ALL LIVES. If our history has taught us that Jewish life is more precious than non-Jewish life, and justifies genocide, then we have utterly failed to learn from history. I cannot imagine a greater moral failure.
I’m no stranger to alienation from my own people over the matter of the Jewish State. As an anti-Zionist for my entire adult life, I’ve never felt a part of mainstream Jewish community and institutions. I’ve always been the Other. I’m used to it.
Even before I fully understood what it meant to be an anti-Zionist, I never managed to pick the “right” side. As a young teenager watching the First Intifada unfold on our television screens over family dinners, I knew who the enemy was supposed to be. I knew that I was not supposed to identify with the Palestinian teens throwing stones against Zionist tanks and guns. But I did. I did. I did. In my silent heart, I cheered them on. And that silent solidarity only grew in time to a more vocal one.
As for my “superficial” Jewish life. My Jewishness is anything but superficial. It is the deepest and most fundamental part of who I am as a living breathing being on this hellscape of an apocalyptic planet. My Jewishness is in my blood and bones, it is in my DNA and it is my ancestors living and thrumming in my cells. My Jewishness is a fundamental part of my identity on every possible level. I am guided by Jewish values which are really just universal values honoring and revering life.
I want no part of any people who reject Jewish and human values in the name of Jewish supremacy in a violent settler-colonial ethno-state. I will join the rest of the world, including my fellow Jews, in refusing that vision, that present, that future.
Love and solidarity to the brave hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian citizens of Israel who have been calling for a ceasefire on the streets of Tel Aviv, in the face of an increasingly draconian Zionist dictatorship.
These days are rearranging my Jewish soul. I am being reshaped by anger and grief and horror at this world that is forcing Palestinians to be genocided, forcing all of us to witness this genocide and the world does nothing, nothing, less than nothing.
The only humans I feel connected to in this moment are the ones who dare to care out loud, and who do not seek false refuge in silence and apathy.
We will never forgive or forget the silence. It is louder than bombs.
I don’t know how to end this post, so I’ll share some parting words from Plestia that were posted a few hours ago:
“I didn’t have access to my account the past two days, and I barely had any internet to fix the problem..but tbh reporting and posting about what’s happening in Gaza, Palestine feels pointless, it feels like I’m posting movie scenes for people to watch and whenever they get bored, they watch something else.. I’ll never forgive anyone who has power to take action and stop what’s happening and is just watching silently..
الله يفرجها علينا بس.. الواحد مش عارف يحزن على حاله ولا على الشهداء ولا على البيوت الي راحت ولا على غزة الي تدمرت..”
[Image description: Plestia, a young Palestinian woman, wears a blue press helmet and vest. Behind her is a street filled with people being ethnically cleansed and fleeing. The sun is overhead. The pain in her eyes is palpable.]
I love you ❤️. I am so proud of you. I wish I could be healthy enough to be out there with you. I am horrified at this continuing situation. Much love to you Leah Xx