Editors’ note: America has published several essays on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and on the war in Gaza. Read other views on the conflict between Israel and Palestine here.
Last Oct. 7, I was about to enter my synagogue to celebrate the holiday of Simchat Torah (literally, the “joy of Torah”) when I was approached by a congregant asking me about what was happening in Israel. I assumed that she was talking about the issue of judicial reform, which had split the country politically, but what she told me shocked me to my core. There had been an invasion with thousands of terrorists managing to get into the country and do the worst horrors imaginable. I was in shock and have been reeling from it ever since.
Considering the prejudice and persecution that the Jewish people have endured throughout our history, we are keenly aware that our existence, in any land, is tenuous. That is why the re-establishment of our homeland, Israel, 2,000 years after forced exile by the Romans represented not just our pride but our very survival. We now had a place to go if (or when) a bigoted population scapegoated us for their failures.
The attack of Oct. 7, led by Hamas (designated as a terrorist group by the United States) and followed immediately by the attacks from Hezbollah (another U.S.-designated terrorist group), before the Israeli military even entered Gaza, were horrific to any objective mind. But it is the gaslighting and abuse coming at the global Jewish community since Oct. 7 that I am still reeling from. Despite many of the terrorists proudly livestreaming their atrocities we have been confronted with denials, minimizations, justifications and even glorifications of these attacks.
At first the rationalizations and justifications for Hamas were from the predictable quarters, but these quickly spread to college students, political leaders, journalists and even clergy. This narrative characterized Israel as the epitome of colonialism, apartheid and genocide, with no right to exist. Old antisemitic tropes were reclaimed from the dustbin of history and brought back to life.
The chants “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” became more frequent, and we were supposed to pretend that this wasn’t a genocidal cry to rid the Holy Land of Jews. That “globalize the Intifada” and “by any means necessary” weren’t calls to violence against Jews everywhere.
Criticism of particular Israeli politicians and policies is appropriate and a critical part of democracy. I am not equating such criticism with antisemitism. It is the criticism of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, while not having a problem with countries that have other official religions like Islam, Christianity or Buddhism, that is problematic. It is calling Israelis colonizers while sitting on Native American land that is hypocritical. It is comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa that is offensive. It is the obsession with Israel, condemning it disproportionately, that is suspect.
Six months ago, the Jesuits released a 500-word statement about the war that was recently brought to my attention while I was working on a sermon about the extreme hostility to which Israel and the Jewish community has been subjected. The statement described the very real horrors occuring in Gaza but did not mention the hostages taken by Hamas until the end of the statement, which seems to invert the sequence of events. It did not mention Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or their financial backer, the state of Iran, which started the war and put Israel into an impossible situation.
The statement stresses that “there are other choices that could be made” in the Middle East. This sounds good, but without offering another choice that includes keeping Israel safe, how is that pronouncement helpful?
The Jesuit statement was still far better than many others, like the infamous one released three days after the Hamas attack by a coalition of Harvard student groups that held the “Israeli regime” to be “entirely responsible” for the Oct. 7 massacre. Or the statement released by the International Sociological Association in July, which calls for a cease-fire but does not demand the return of the Israeli hostages. It was also better than the bias against Israel at the United Nations. According to the watchdog group U.N. Watch, the U.N. General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions critical of Israel in 2023; it adopted only seven such resolutions for all the other nations in the world combined.
While I doubt that Israel is justified in every action in this defensive war, I strongly believe that the disproportionately harsh condemnations of Israel are having a real impact on public opinion, and causing real harm on the streets in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League reported a 360 percent spike in antisemitic incidents in the United States during the three months following Oct. 7, and I highly doubt this was a coincidence.
Israel was and continues to be forced into this impossible situation by intentional design of those who planned and executed Oct. 7. The continued holding of hostages by Hamas leaves Israel no choice other than to continue the war. And as has been well documented, Hamas has intentionally held the hostages in civilian homes and in tunnels built under schools, United Nations facilities, hospitals and mosques—so that when Israel tries to rescue the hostages or bring the terrorists hiding there to justice, Hamas can claim that Israel is attacking civilians and committing war crimes.
As I was preparing my sermons for the Jewish high holy days, I was plagued by the question of how and why many good people seem to have jumped on the “free Palestine” bandwagon and bought into some of the worst accusations against us. The answer that came to me was extreme empathy. It seems to me that wearing a keffiyeh, associated with “the resistance,” has become fashionable, and that hating Zionists is seen as a kind of antiracism.
I encouraged my congregation to learn about how empathy can be a tremendously powerful tool for good, but can also cause real harm. That harm happens when people get too caught up in the emotionality of empathy and suspend using their objective minds. I encouraged them to consider the value of what psychologist Paul Bloom calls “rational compassion” instead of only empathy.
I also reminded them that no matter how much we are dehumanized by our detractors, it is against our values to dehumanize others. We should be careful not to let our empathy for our brothers and sisters in Israel lead us to condemning all Palestinians and their supporters.
I pray that a year after Oct. 7, we all are able to see all people as God’s children who deserve to live in peace and freedom. As stated by the prophet Isaiah 2:4: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.”
