Check your Moral Math

Two deaths here are not worse that two deaths there

So stipulated: The murder of the Israeli embassy staff couple was horrific and wrong, no matter how horrific and wrong the slaughter in Gaza is.

Refused: The contention that somehow the reported cruelty of the shooter was more cruel and more horrible because the victims were Jewish and they look like “us,” than the deaths, every single day, of scores of couples in Gaza as much in love as Sarah and Yaron, who often perish with their children, or leave them orphaned or with amputated limbs.

Is Rodriquez a more despicable human being than Netanyahu or Ben Givr, or all of the pilots who dutifully drop bombs on hospitals, refugee camps, entire apartment buildings, or the snipers who kill mothers and fathers searching for food? Is that all right because it’s part of a justified war of self-defense, because hatred of Palestinians is less odious than hatred of Israelis?

What I can’t help noting is how so many of my nominally progressive Jewish friends (“nominally,” because they’re liberal on every topic but Israel) decry the villainous Netanyahu, while seeming to fall right into a trap of his design, and that of 50 years of Israeli propaganda, that being blindly supportive of Israel is a fundamental and basic component of being a Jew. The narrative holds that any questioning of the actions, by non-Israeli Jews, of this state, constitutes self-hatred and disloyalty; but that Israel’s pursuit of Hamas is so justified that the collateral damage of tens of thousands of Palestinians is morally excusable. In this narrative, no one who opposes the war in Gaza is allowed to differentiate between Jews and Israelis: it is always about anti-Semitism. But Israel is allowed to conflate Hamas and every single person in the Gaza Strip, they are basically all some shade of terrorist, even the children.

I have seen more posts in 24 hours from these friends about the D.C. tragedy than I have seen from them in the past 18 months about Gaza or the West Bank, as if two Jewish deaths in the United States is far more repugnant than the war crime of mass famine imposed by Israel, and the murder from the ground and sky of 80-100 Palestinians a day in the current offensive.

The conflation narrative has been so “successful” that Rodriquez and thousands of others have internalized it as well. They make no difference between Judaism and the state of Israel, they couldn’t tell you one thing about the Torah or different tenets of secular, reform or Orthodox Judaism. They’ve never had a Jewish friend, could not tell you what pogroms were, or have read one account of a concentration camp. In their Instagram world, they only see the daily images of the ongoing genocide, and the IDF is just the mirror image of Hamas, except it’s inflicting 100 times the damage on Gaza as Hamas did on on Israel on October 7, and is therefore is 100 times more reprehensible.

It is incumbent on American Jews to refuse the litmus test of a belief in Zionism, right or wrong, as a requirement for calling yourself Jewish. That they recognize that Israel itself is an artificial construct that has become a nationality with the dictates and culture of a nation like any other, one based on some very toxic beliefs, namely in the rectitude of a regional supremacy that includes expulsion and colonial expansion, as evidenced by the slow swallowing up of the West Bank, with 750,000 settlers and counting. Supporting Israel no matter what is like supporting the U.S. no matter what. If you reject Trump’s MAGA narrative, why are you accepting Netanyahu’s Jewish- equals-Zionist narrative?

The protests, with significant Jewish participation, against the slaughter in Gaza are being vilified as being anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas, in a very conscious effort to drown out their real message: That it is wrong for human beings to be silent during a genocide of other human beings, that Palestinians have human rights and national aspirations that should be respected. There is every reason that the kind of ethical, kind, and fair-minded Jews I grew up with, that I learned my value system from, should be raising their voice against what is being done in their name. That war, long since gone past any retributive justice in response to Oct 7, is just as wrong today as it was three days ago. Not to mention is causing the starvation and likely death of their own hostages, when their release could have been arranged long ago with a ceasefire agreement.

I guarantee you, that behind closed doors, Netanyahu is extremely relieved that the assassination of this young couple is serving to corral a diaspora that was drifting. As if they weren’t drifting for good reason.

You also need to see this couple with the very same compassion with which you view Sarah and Yaron. Their names were Alaa Abu Salah and his wife Ayat. Israel killed them two days ago with their children Malik, Hanan, and Elaf.