In response to the letter by seven Jewish students alleging to represent the entire Jewish student body of Oberlin, I would like to present a perspective that I am confident is held by far more. I will begin by stating the obvious: their letter demonstrates a complete lack of empathy toward those who lost family or friends in the unprovoked Oct. 7 massacre of around 1,200 Israelis which was launched from Gaza, a territory that Israel disengaged from in 2005. No nation would have failed to respond had their sisters been raped, their mothers burned alive, their brothers kidnapped, and their grandparents taken captive as all too many Israelis experienced that day. The callous indifference of the seven authors to the attack of Oct. 7 speaks volumes.
Equally problematic is that these students use words with very strong negative connotations to generate a sentiment that, I believe, could not be generated from the facts. The U.N. General Assembly’s formation of the State of Israel in 1948 was followed by an attack from five Arab armies. In its struggle for survival, Israel gained territory.
Despite claims by the seven student authors, in fact to the contrary, Israel is not engaged in a “white supremacist and colonial project.” Forty-eight percent of Israeli citizens are Sephardic Jews, some of whose families fled those same Arab nations that declared war on Israel in 1948, and others, because of antisemitism. The around 160,000 Ethiopian Jews in Israel are just the most recent example of Middle Eastern and North African Jews who immigrated or were evacuated to Israel. In addition, around 20 percent of Israeli citizens and permanent residents are Arabs, some of whom serve in Israel’s military, Supreme Court, parliament (the Knesset) and various branches of government.
The authors’ disregard for the meanings of terms such as “white supremacist,” discussed above, suggests either ignorance or deceit. The same is true of their use of the term “genocide.” Israel is fighting a war that was started by Hamas on Oct. 7 because, as Hamas’ 2017 charter states, “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” Israel is acting to eliminate Hamas leaders and is not engaged in the deliberate killing of a people with the goal of eliminating them. Israel has sought peace with neighboring countries such as Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt (to whom it returned land) and, most recently, Saudi Arabia. Israel has also negotiated with the Palestinian people; it was Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian people who refused an offer by Israel in 2000 of some 90 percent of the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state.
As antisemitism rises dramatically in this country and others, the authors of the “Open Letter from Oberlin’s Jewish Students” might like to ponder if Israel is in fact the one place where all Jews can find a safe haven.
