‘Not in my name:’ Group of metro Detroit Jews denounces Israel siege on Gaza
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As Israel prepared to intensify its assault on the Gaza Strip with a potential ground invasion, dozens of southeast Michigan Jewish people gathered Monday outside a downtown Detroit federal building with a message for their elected leaders: “Not in my name.”
The group of about 100 called on Democratic U.S. Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow to help “stop the genocide of Palestinians” as Israel wages a retaliatory war against Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and earlier this month killed about 1,300 Israelis.
They chanted, sang and spoke after a week of Israeli airstrikes killed more than 2,750 Palestinians — many of them civilians and children — and injured more than 9,700, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Speakers, some in Jewish prayer shawls and kippahs, drew parallels between Israel’s response and the Holocaust.
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Lior, 25, who declined to provide a last name for fear of estranging family, shared how a grandfather survived the genocide that wiped out nearly four generations of relatives. Some went on to settle in Israel – whose founding 75 years ago displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – including, eventually, on a kibbutz near one massacred by Hamas earlier this month.
“Today in Gaza family lines are ending – this is the definition of genocide,” Lior said. “My family survived it. I cannot live with myself or my people if another people experience genocide in my name.”
Jake Ehrlrich, who works at a synagogue, said the moment calls for "humanization" and an end to the "deadly cycle of violence."
“I came out to tell our elected leaders who support this genocidal war with words, weapons, and our tax dollars, that it is an affront to our Jewish tradition, which teaches that every death is the loss of an entire world,” he said.
Mainstream Jewish groups have defended Israel’s fight as necessary for rooting out Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group they say intentionally burrows itself among Palestinian civilians, using them as “human shields.” Israel has shown restraint, they argue, attempting to limit civilian casualties with evacuation orders.
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Those gathered Monday, however, painted a much different picture — one of a country committing war crimes under the false pretense of safety for its citizens.
Since Hamas’ attack a little more than a week ago, Israel has cut off food, water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza's 2.3 million residents. It dropped 6,000 bombs in the first six days of retaliatory air strikes — almost as many as were dropped by the U.S. in Afghanistan in one year. On Friday, it issued what the United Nations called an “impossible” evacuation order to more than 1 million Gazans, telling them to go south, then reportedly bombed a designated “safe route.” NGOs have meanwhile accused it of using white phosphorus on civilians, a claim Israel denies.
Dana Kornberg, 41, of Dearborn, lamented that some Jews see such atrocities as necessary for their survival.
But that, she and other protesters argued, is a false choice. To them, it's not Hamas that endangers Jews, but the state of Israel itself, whose origins and policies — including the blockade that has turned Gaza into what human rights groups call the world’s largest open-air prison — have fomented decades of conflict and resentment.
“Last week triggered memories of the Holocaust for many Jewish people, but this does not mean that we are still there,” said Kornberg. “Israel has long been the recipient of billions of unconditional U.S. dollars, it was created by the British empire, and — unlike Palestinians — Israelis live in a world full of options.”
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The clearest options, however, do not appear particularly viable. Kornberg and others at the demonstration said they support a one-state solution, with reparations for Palestinians, that would merge Israel, the Palestinian West Bank, and the Gaza Strip into one nation.
A two-state solution — the goal of past negotiations to end the decades-long conflict — meanwhile, “may not be totally dead but is so close to death that efforts to revive it are likely to be little more than acts of zombie diplomacy,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan think tank, wrote last week.
In the near term, the demonstrators’ goal was more modest and urgent. Gathered outside the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building where Peters has offices, they demanded he and Stabenow call for an immediate cease-fire. They echoed Jewish-led demonstrators who urged the same of President Joe Biden at a rally outside the White House Monday, where more than 30 were arrested.
Peters’ staff said he was traveling, but permitted 10 demonstrators to meet with representatives from his office, organizers said. They recited the mourner’s kaddish — a bereavement prayer — and left.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: ‘Not in my name:’ Jewish group denounces Israel siege on Gaza
