Ashamnu (We Have Sinned): A Rabbi Reflects on a Year of Devastation
Delivered at Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church, Oct. 13, 2024
A few weeks ago I reached out to Rev. Rose to ask if I could borrow her pulpit close to the High Holidays because I had something to say and no place to really say it. She said yes, for which I’m grateful. Because I’m here to talk about Israel – the proverbial third rail.
Jews have always valued, longed for, and prayed toward the holy land, but the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish state in historical Palestine is about 150 years old. I came up in the years after the 1967 war, and we were raised with a lot of what I now recognize as propaganda: the plucky little state of Holocaust survivors and refugees under assault by the great faceless mass of “Arabs” and why can’t they leave us alone.
During those years Israel became, not simply a part of contemporary Jewish identity, but perhaps its most important part. I’m not the first person to note that American Jews may not believe in God, they may not observe rituals, but for the last 50 years, and today, if you express doubt about Israel in the wrong way then you are not welcome in the tent.
There have always been “liberal Zionists” – supporting a Jewish state but also a territorial compromise with the Palestinians – the two-state solution. For a long time I was in that camp. The zenith of liberal Zionism was during the government of Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s, when a compromise seemed not only possible, but imminent. But then Rabin was assassinated, Netanyahu took over and that was the end of that.
Netanyahu came to power with the explicit intention of scuttling the two-state solution, and that has been his project ever since. Settlement in the occupied territories had been going on all along, but after the second intifada it accelerated, with previous red lines and restrictions in areas thought to be too close to Palestinian areas eliminated. Occupation and settlement has become virtually a religious imperative, with the most rightwing elements in Israeli Jewish society increasingly taking over the mechanisms of government, until today, when people who 20 years ago wouldn’t have been allowed to serve in the Knesset because of their racism are ministers in a government of, by, and for the settlers.
Since the collapse of the peace process, Israel has treated the "conflict" as if it were a war that Israel had won, with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza treated as a subject population under military dictatorship. Israeli governments have allowed the settlers to do pretty much anything they want in the West Bank and Gaza. There has been a tight embargo on goods going in and out of Gaza since Hamas took it over in 2007. There were military incursions into Gaza, with many civilian deaths, in 2008, 2012, 2021, and of course 2023. And all that time, the land grabs, organized violence by settlers, and establishment of a full apartheid system in the West Bank, was firmly set in place.
If one of the parties doesn’t want a compromise and does everything in its power to undermine it, there isn’t much chance of success - as Barack Obama found out. At this point the two-state solution is a shibboleth that liberal American Jews and American politicians use to pretend they actually have a path forward – but they don’t. Liberal Zionism is a failed philosophy, it has no moral weight or political prospects - despite many liberal Jewish organizations that continue to pay it lip service.
And so I left liberal Zionism behind. I consider myself a post Zionist, and since liberal Zionism is the acceptable left edge of Jewish discourse, this has put me at odds with the community, especially one as conservative as this one. I am fortunate that I have been able to make a living with my interfaith advocacy work, so while I don’t make a habit of speaking about Israel, I also don’t have to muffle my voice for the sake of professional viability.
Hamas’ attack in Israel’s south on October 7, horrifying as it was – about which more in a minute – has to be seen in this context: a longstanding situation of displacement and oppression, with neither the prospect for political advancement (or even basic rights) for the Palestinians nor international intervention to moderate Israel's behavior. Zionist claims that this attack was completely out of blue with no possible context are false.
As the Israeli government and electorate moved right, so did the American Jewish community’s leadership, until today all the major Jewish communal organizations have made supporting Israel their major, some might say sole, mission. The Anti-Defamation League is a good example – founded to support human rights and oppose antisemitism, it has become a pro- Israel lobby group, using the credibility it built up over the century to accuse anyone who doubts Israel’s action of antisemitism.
The attacks on October 7th were horrifying - full stop. I know some in the Palestine liberation movement or the garbage left want to see it as legitimate armed resistance, but an operation designed to kill civilians is not liberatory.
Israelis are convinced the world is against them and doesn’t care if they live or die; acting out of grief and trauma, and in a propaganda bubble, the legitimate revulsion at a terrible act of terrorism was used as a rationale to unleash retributive brutality on Gaza. Israeli officials use the language of Amalek - in Deuteronomy 25:17–19, the Israelites are specifically commanded to "blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven" in retribution for "what Amalek did to [them] on the way as [they] were coming out of Egypt." Once you start calling your enemies Amalek there’s no way back.
But even I could not have imagined how terrible and overwhelming and yes, genocidal Israel’s response has been. At least 42,000 and probably many more dead. Nearly 100,000 wounded, with no medical infrastructure to care for them, and 10,000 missing. The deliberate destruction of the entire infrastructure of Gaza - hospitals, schools, water treatment and electricity, apartment buildings, refugee camps. People shot as they flee or attempt to surrender. Blocking of humanitarian aid and use of starvation and disease against a civilian population. The deliberate murder of journalists and emergency responders. In September Gaza's Ministry of Health released a document containing the names and ages of Palestinians killed by Israel since October 7, a list that runs 649 pages—the first 14 of which are filled with the names of babies. When I last checked on Friday, 61 Palestinians had been killed and 231 wounded in the prior 24 hours. And now the war has expanded to Lebanon.
The Talmud teaches, “Whoever destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed the world.” How many worlds we have destroyed!
***
The Judaism I follow is a peace-loving religion, one that stands against unjust power – as in the exodus story – and for an ethical standard that is universal and eternal. American Judaism’s dedication to the value of tikkun olam – repair of the world – is inspirational, and American Jews have been deeply involved progressive movements, including the civil rights, peace, feminist, and union movements. And our experience in the 20th century taught us and the world, genocide is categorically wrong.
Israel went a different way. Harry Truman was recorded saying that if the Jews got state power they would be just as bad as everybody else, and he was right. A 2000-year tradition of rabbinic aversion to violence, of dedication to the service of God, to learning, could neither withstand nor guide 75 years of power.
Those of us who advocated for a compromise when that was still possible argued that the Occupation couldn’t help but undermine the moral structure of Israel. What we didn’t realize was that it would undermine the moral structure of Judaism itself.
There are many younger Jews, many of whom went through day schools and summer camps having the same ethical message instilled in them, who are fighting back, and this is heartening. But most synagogues and other mainstream Jewish institutions have fallen in step behind Israel’s actions. There's a _lot of pressure to quote-unquote support Israel, including pressures of employment in Jewish institutions. It is taken as inarguable that Israel is the wronged party, and that virtually any action it takes is justified – because Hamas. One will also hear heartfelt pleas for solidarity from family and friends in Israel, saying the whole country is disrupted, on war footing, sheltering in bomb shelters due to missiles from Iran and Lebanon and that if Jewish solidarity is to mean anything it has to mean something now. I mourn the loss of life in Israel and I feel for my friends there. But I can’t support the actions of the state.
It's profoundly heartbreaking to find people that you respect and admire – teachers and friends -- taking a position that seems so morally questionable – and I know they think the same thing about me. Relationships are fraying. American Jewish leadership – and, it must be said, American political leadership – continues to support Israel's actions unconditionally.
I mourn for what has happened to my beautiful religion, to my people. “Seek peace and pursue it”, we are taught. But in place of justice we have brutality, in place of peace we have not simply quote-unquote self-defense but wanton retribution and annihilation. And it is done in the name of the Jewish people. It’s truly heartbreaking. And in this period of the high holy days, of repentance and return, too many cannot acknowledge the devastation that we have inflicted, and continue to inflict on the Palestinian population. We have sinned - we have trespassed, we have done violence, we have counseled evil. We have stolen. We have committed sexual immorality. And we can’t even ask for forgiveness because we don’t even recognize that what we have done is wrong. <slide off>
***
I want to now turn from the moral issue to the political ramifications. Israel has developed technology and tactics in the suppression of Palestinian resistance, including nonviolent resistance, and sells that technology and teaches those tactics to other autocratic forces around the world, including American police. For all the talk of “start up nation,” Israel's main export at this point is security technology. And now it seems to have proof-of-concept that mass slaughter of a subject population is just another tactic.
Netanyahu is a stone war criminal of the Milosevic variety who should not spend another day out of the Hague but he didn’t do this by himself. According to a survey in May, only 4% of Israeli Jews agree that the government’s actions in Gaza have gone too far. And American Jewish institutions, and the American government, has supported him every step of the way.
And make no mistake - Netanyahu wants Trump to win this election. He knows he’ll get a free hand to do what he wants – not that Biden hasn’t given that to him also. The alliance between rightwing Jewish Zionists and evangelical Christians is deepening and is in opposition to everything American Jews have always stood for in terms of the separation of church and state, the acceptance and celebration of diversity, and the pursuit of justice and peace. And then there is the role of AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby, in spending big money to defeat progressives - mostly progressives of color – in Democratic primaries.
Accusations of antisemitism have been weaponized in support of Israel's actions, so much that it seems the 1st amendment itself is in jeopardy. People have lost their livelihoods for speaking out and are attacked, as Ta-Nehasi Coates found out recently. Tenured professors are fired for Instagram posts, and peaceful protesters are expelled from school, or deported or prosecuted – it is today’s red scare. There is certainly antisemitism in Palestinian solidarity movements and in the broader left -- I've seen it myself -- but we have to recognize that taking away the right of people to protest that which should be protested establishes the precedent that speech and assembly are not guaranteed. This will make it easier to suppress future protest movements, which may be very necessary, the way things are going.
And finally, Israel's actions in Palestine ,and the toxified discourse around it, are making it much harder for us to build the kinds of broad coalitions that are necessary to resist the fascist onslaught.
And oh by the way, while all this is going on, real, vicious antisemitism is growing every day, particularly on X, which I refer to as Xitter. Tens of millions of messages every day, leading to real harassment of real Jews. A major party’s presidential candidate threatens that Jews will be blamed if he loses the election. The ADL doesn't seem to have much to say about any of that.
I have a colleague who criticizes me because he thinks that I'm being performative in front of non-Jews, that I'm not taking into account the real concerns Jews have about safety in Israel or antisemitism because I largely have a Christian audience. But to me, the moral issue is clear: genocide is simply wrong - a crime, a sin - no matter what the provocation. It beggars belief that I even have to say it. If the choice is between supporting genocide and ethnic solidarity, then to me it’s not really a choice.
***
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the language of “promised land.” The main narrative in the Torah is the exodus from Egypt and the journey across the desert to the Promised Land. The Torah - the five books - ends with Moses dying and the people on cusp of entering the land, and at that moment, in the synagogue we literally, physically roll the Torah scroll back to the beginning and begin again at the story of creation. The Promised Land remains just that – a promise - inchoate and unrealized. The existence of the modern state of Israel has concretized this whole idea so that when we read of the “promised land” we immediately identify it with the contemporary State of Israel. This constricts our ability to think of the term metaphorically - and to imagine something better.
We need to reclaim the idea, or recognize the reality, that we continue to live in exile, and that the promise is yet to be realized. We have to figure out a way forward for Palestinian human rights and self-determination and work to develop a Judaism that does not place Israel at its the center, a Judaism that has not sacrificed its moral power on the altar of Zionism. The path may be long and the future uncertain, but the promised land of equal rights, equal citizenship, and equal justice for all, is in front of us all.