Why do American Jews and Christians lack empathy for Palestinians?
Jews and Christians fought for freedom and equality, just not for my people
A Palestinian man waits for news of his daughter as rescue workers search for survivors under rubble of a building hit in an overnight Israeli bombing in Rafah, April 21, 2024. Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP
As an American Palestinian, the one thing I hate above all else is others — and, yes, especially Israelis — telling Palestinians what they should and shouldn’t do. So I understand that it might seem odd that I am about to do just that when it comes to Israelis — and American Jews, and Americans at large.
But I also see, every day, the cruel repercussions of decades of misrepresentation of Palestinians as a result of Israeli oppression. I am a Christian, and frequently encounter others in my faith who repeat falsehoods in support of Israel, sometimes in the name of our faith, without knowing much about the reality we face on the ground.
And I am an American, and I have met too many Americans who have similarly bought into the ideas that dehumanize Palestinians without any effort to fact-check them. The atrocities of the past year have made it impossible to continue being silent in the face of this callousness. They have made it impossible to avoid doing the thing I hate doing most, and telling other people how to better live their lives.
This past weekend marked the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, a day of reckoning and atonement. In the wake of that day’s rigorous self-examination, I hope my honest, straightforward approach will be accepted for what it is — a deep and genuine desire to contribute to creating peace in our broken region.
My question is this. Freedom, equality, and empathy are values deeply engraved in Jewish, Christian and American traditions; they are part of what I most cherish in my own American Christian identity, and qualities that have helped me forge deep bonds with my Jewish peers. So why is it that they are so sadly absent when it comes to the Palestinian issue?
Jewish tradition is full of stories about the desire to be free. Every year on Passover Jews repeat the story celebrating the ascent to freedom of the Jewish people in Egypt. Yet so many Jews have failed to support the cause of freedom and equality for Palestinian people — whose daily lives are a clear parallel to the oppression ancient Jews are described as suffering under the reign of Pharaoh.
Why such oversight, when Jews have long been leaders in and supporters of other movements for freedom — like the emancipation of the slaves, the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-apartheid movement?
Last month a group of Israeli hostage families and their supporters entered a synagogue attended by Israeli Member of Knesset Yuli Edelstein and placed flyers demanding an agreement to release the hostages. One of the protestors said she was among those Jewish Israelis who protested Edelstein’s own incarceration in the Soviet Union and now that he is free, he should be part of the effort to free the hostages.
Such uniquely Jewish stories of the struggle for freedom beg the question: Why do so many American Jews — and Christians — turn a blind eye to the cause of freedom for only one people — my own?
As with freedom, so with equality. I have long admired Jewish efforts to push for their own equality in the face of oppression. And I have admired those Jews who have, even more bravely, pushed for the equality of others — even those who hate them. One of my heroes is Aryeh Neier, the founder of Human Rights Watch, who as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union fought for and succeeded in securing the rights of Nazis to demonstrate in a heavily Jewish suburban Chicago neighborhood, even though he himself is a Holocaust survivor. Neier understood that if one citizen is restricted from protests, even if they are vile protests, then others, including Jews, will eventually be denied this equality.
I have read the work of many learned Jewish rabbis and thinkers who have insisted that the idea of Jews being a “chosen people’ must be interpreted as them being chosen for a mission, or chosen to set an example — not chosen for privilege and superiority.
Yet Jewish and Christian Zionists alike increasingly seem to support the idea of Jewish supremacy in Israel and Palestine. And even if they don’t actively support that idea, too many turn away from considering the implications of empowering those who do — like the far-right cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The principle of Jewish supremacy in Israel has long been evident in Israeli laws, starting with the 1950 Law of Return and extending through the 2018 “nation-state law.” But even more important than the laws are the clear discriminatory practices that we see every day in both Israel and the occupied West Bank. As Hagai Elad, the former director of the Israeli civil rights organization B’Tselem, wrote recently in The New York Times, a devastating “wave of violence” behind the Green Line “is the inevitable result of what can only be understood as Israel’s decades-long effort to achieve total control over the West Bank.”
At the root of the disregard for principles of freedom and equality when it comes to Palestinians is, I believe, a lack of empathy — itself a value deeply rooted in Judaism and Christianity. Over the past 12 months of war, rabbis and Christian Zionist leaders have demonstrated a total lack of empathy towards Palestinians, but shameful support for their total destruction.
The Prime Minister of Israel and his defense minister called on his own soldiers to treat Palestinians as the hated biblical enemy of Amalek — in regards to whom, in the Bible, Jews are commanded to “spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!”
Empathy is based on striving to understand the other. The Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, were horrifying and must be condemned. No one should ask Israelis or their supporters to agree with those who act against Israel. But basic humanitarian law and ethics stipulate that even Palestinian prisoners have dignity and the right to basic needs such as hygiene and family visits. Does denying them those rights — or denying the right of their community to support them — make them change? The opposite is true, it plants even more hatred and is illogical.
It is only through empathy — through understanding — that we will be able to bring peace to this extraordinarily damaged region. From empathy will come a push for freedom and equality; it is there that we must start. My plea to Jews, Christians, and Americans of all stripes is to find empathy for Palestinians, and push those in power to find the same. It is our best, precious chance for a resolution to all this pain.
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