My family went to Venice, Italy, this summer. We stood in the world’s first ghetto, where guards locked in Jews each night.
There was a man sitting at a table with pamphlets in support of Israel. He asked me, “Are you Jewish by chance?” I am.
Right now, Palestinian children are starving in Gaza. Starving, because Israel is starving them. But still, right now, there are people who say that speaking against Israel is harm against Jews.
It isn’t. Defending this is.
I understand the urge for nuance. I am not jejune or radical. I am an elementary school principal. A dad. My younger son is preparing for his bar mitzvah even now.
But I have eyes. So do our children. And so does the world.
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has written: “Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides.”
On the highway, a billboard says: “Protesting Israel but silent about Congo? Makes you wonder why.”
Profoundly, they miss the moment.
Yes, Jew hatred is real. It’s easy to remember in the ghetto of Venice: Jews seen as strange, suspicious people. Jews as a people apart. These are old ideas, still with us. Wrong then. Wrong now.
Sure, I can understand the fear — that the fervor in the movement against Israel comes from latent hate of Jews.
My own son asks, earnestly: “Why does everyone talk about Israel when so many things are wrong?”
Even Brin’s words — crass, impolitic and from the mouth of a billionaire — express something I have heard others say. The word “genocide” was invented in 1944, responding to the Holocaust. The Holocaust led to the extermination of 6 million Jews — so recent that some who lived it are still living. Why such eagerness to apply that word today?
But it is not antisemitism that causes people to say “genocide.” It is not hatred of Jews that gives the movement its fervor. It’s Israel. It’s what Israel is doing.
And because Israel claims itself a Jewish nation, what Israel does, does harm to us.
Watching Israel’s war in Gaza is like watching a fight that isn’t one. Like watching a person landing blows against a person on the ground. Anyone in their right mind would call out, “No.”
But the people who lead and support this war are not in their right minds.
In Israel, too many have radicalized themselves through fear, or want of vengeance, into believing their neighbors are not human.
In America, too many have radicalized themselves into believing this war is just. That Hamas is so despicable or dangerous that its destruction is worth brutality.
What I tell my sons is: We talk about Israel not because Israel is Jewish but because Israel is wrong.
We talk about Israel because it’s an ally of our nation, using weapons we sold it, whose actions our leaders defend.
We talk about Israel because its army has world historic power, which it is using to level an enclave the size of Chicago.
We talk about Israel because it has made all of Gaza a ghetto, where Palestinians are locked in night and day.
We talk about Israel because we see children starving a fence away from food.
And we talk about Israel, when the world is dense with problems, because this is a problem our voices can help.
America is Israel’s most important defender, ally and patron. The moment America says this war must end, it will. The moment America says Israel must change, it must.
I tell my children: It is not Jews’ fault Israel is doing what it is doing. And Israel is not doing what it is doing because it is Jews. But as Jews, as Americans and as humans, we all have obligation to say that this is wrong.
Criticism of Israel does not hurt Jews. What hurts us is what hurts everyone: watching this and not doing everything we can to make it stop.
Seth Lavin is a Chicago Public Schools principal.
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