We must defend Israel's right to exist and stand against both antisemitism, Islamophobia

"It feels like 1939." That's what Rabbi Rob Morais told me. The spiritual leader of Erie's Temple Anshe Hesed should know. In 1941, his family fled certain death in Europe for the "safety" of war-torn Shanghai, China. They emigrated to a war zone because no nation deemed Jewish lives valuable enough to save. To Morais, "1939" is shorthand for the onset of the Holocaust's most murderous phase and a world wholly indifferent to Jewish life.

The Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel has turned much of the Jewish world's clock back to 1939. That Hamas brutally murdered, mutilated, and decapitated nearly 1,400 children, grandmothers, and even young concertgoers should not surprise. A "hate group" by any definition of the term, Hamas, in its 1988 charter, called for the murder of all Israeli Jews. It is the world's indifference to Jewish life that shocks the soul and turns back the clock.

Hamas recorded their decapitations, sexual violence, and kidnappings of small children for the entire world to witness. And what was the world's reaction? On Oct. 7, Najma Sharif, an American writer for Teen Vogue voiced her approval of this wanton savagery in a tweet, "What did yall think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers." Karen Attiah, the Washington Post's global opinions editor, "liked" the tweet. Joining Attiah were protesters from London to New York who voiced their delight for the Hamas bloodlust. Within days, students at Stanford, Harvard, and additional campuses rallied to denounce Israel.

These were not protests of Israel's counterattack. It had yet to even begin. There is nothing antisemitic about criticizing Israeli policy. But it is antisemitic to celebrate Jewish death.

Rabbi Morais is wrong, in my view. This is not 1939. It's worse. In 1939, indifference reigned. Today, the antisemites openly celebrate the wanton murder of Jews.

I am neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian. I have traveled throughout Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Jordan. I have discussed and studied the conflict with many of the world's leading experts. The events of Oct. 7 and consequent Israeli-Hamas War confound. Social media disinformation makes events even more confusing. This is a basic primer to understand the incomprehensible.

Most Israelis, like Palestinians, want peace

To begin with, neither "side" is pure. Most Palestinians do not support Hamas. Gazans are held hostage by an extremist organization which murders its political opponents and holds zero regard for Palestinian life. Hamas is the enemy, not Palestinians. Israel is a complicated, multifaceted society. Most Israelis, like Palestinians, want peace. But right-wing extremists have moved into the Israeli mainstream. They thwart the majority's desires. I have personally heard genocidal rhetoric directed at Palestinians from Israeli fanatics. Islamophobia is as noxious as antisemitism.

At root, Hamas denies Israel's very right to exist. Hamas, and its Western apologists, deem Israel a European, imperial outpost. To them, Israel has no legitimate claim to the land of Israel/Palestine. This flies in the face of facts. For nearly 3,000 years, Jews have lived in Israel/Palestine and throughout the Middle East. Since the fifth century, war, emigration, and expulsion pushed most Jews outside of Israel/Palestine. But a Jewish population always remained in their ancestral homeland.

In the 19th century, Jewish nationalists, or Zionists, sought a Jewish state in Israel/Palestine. But they returned as refugees, not settler colonialists. They fled European antisemitism, the Holocaust, and, after 1948, vicious anti-Jewish sentiment across the Arab world. Today, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews who hail from the Middle East and North Africa comprise Israel's majority. How can these brown and dark-skinned Jews be European colonialists?

Jewish state essential to Jewish survival

Modern Israel's founding displaced Palestinians. Through land purchase, conflict, and war Palestinians have been denied self-determination. It is deeply unfair that Palestinians have paid the price for the world's antisemitism. And it has taken far too long to achieve a Palestinian state. But the world's indifference to Jewish life makes a Jewish state essential for Jewish survival.

We gentiles don't fully appreciate antisemitism's ferocious endurance. Five years ago, I visited a Jewish cemetery in Ukraine. As is custom, I wore a kippah. On my way out, a local reminded me to remove it before I left the cemetery and walked the streets. Even in Lvov, a cosmopolitan city that is famous for its religious tolerance, Jews are still attacked for the crime of being Jewish.

That reality should scarcely make us into cheerleaders for all Israeli policies and actions.

Many right-wing Israelis refuse to acknowledge the necessity of a Palestinian state. This view entails either a permanent Israeli occupation of Palestinian land or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from that territory. Either is frightful to behold. Israel's current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has always opposed the two-state solution. His former government featured several noxious Islamophobe ministers. It is the extremists, on both sides, who derail peace. The Oct. 7 pogrom was yet another example of this reality.

Like Rabbi Morais, Ilan Troen's family fled Europe's pogroms and antisemitism. Troen found a home in southern Israel. I spent the summer of 2007 studying under Troen at Brandeis University and in Israel. A world-famous academic, he devotes his career to peace. His Jewish grandkids attend school with Palestinian children. In Israel, he even arranged for me (and others) to meet with a Hamas representative. "Grappling with complexity," he would say was the key to a lasting peace.

His daughter, Deborah, a musician and peace activist, lived in a kibbutz next to Gaza. On Oct. 7, Hamas murdered Deborah and her husband, Shlomi. They died shielding their 16-year-old son, Rotem, from a hail of bullets. Hamas murdered the very Israelis who build the bridges for peace.

None of us know the way forward. Hamas has surely lost any legitimacy to rule. Israel has a right to self-defense. Quietly, every Arab government, except Qatar, want Hamas out of Gaza. How the world removes this noxious entity without a frightful number of civilian deaths is a tragic geopolitical puzzle. I fear the current Israeli strategy, if you can even call it that, is a massive miscalculation. The lives of the innocents in Gaza matter, too.

But we cannot turn back the clock to 1939. "Antisemitism," is, as Saint John Paul the Great tells us, "an offense against God." For anyone who wants peace and a Palestinian state, the road starts with a joint commitment to Israel's right to exist and a robust stand against antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Jeff Bloodworth, Ph.D., is a resident of Erie and a fellow with the Truman National Security Project. You can follow him on X @jhueybloodworth. 

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie expert explains Israel-Hamas war and the need to end hate