An Open Letter to a Colleague who Decries (the fact that people are talking about)the Murder of Yaron Lischinksy and Sarah Milgrim (but not the act of terrorism itself)
Dear Anonymous1 Colleague,
Let me begin this letter by saying that I’m writing under the assumption that you are a person of good conscience who is rightfully horrified by the gruesome toll of Hamas-Israel war2, but who is also deeply misguided in what you imagine could lead to its end. Let me assure you that the strategy you’ve employed will only make it harder to bring all the actual stakeholders to the table to identify and implement practical solutions that provide security and self-determination to all the people of the region. The more you demonstrate how cheaply you, and other Americans who consider themselves pro-Palestinian3, hold Jewish and/or Israeli lives, the more you convince the moderates among us that we are in an existential battle for our own survival. That’s the way you radicalize otherwise reasonable people.
On May 22nd, the day after a terrorist murdered two attendees—one Jewish, one Christian—at an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, I posted the following on my Facebook feed:
You can't be genuinely for the security and self-determination of Palestinians without also being for the security and self-determination of Israelis. There are millions of people caught up in this conflict with nowhere else to go; and despite what the current administration says no country or group of countries is willing to take vast numbers of Israelis or Palestinians in as refugees.
You're either for co-existance or you are for the continuation of this decades, now approaching a century, long war.
This header accompanied a reposting of the following from Palestinian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:
Free Palestine from deranged “free Palestine” gunmen! The criminal murder and tragic killing of two Israeli embassy staff at the Capital Jewish Museum during an American Jewish Community’s (AJC) young diplomats’ event in Washington, DC, one where I had intended to attend with a colleague had it not been for a NYC trip, is a horrific reminder of a broken Israel and Palestine discourse. The cowardly assailant, Elias Rodriguez, from Chicago, shouted “free Palestine” as he was being arrested.
While there are many legitimate voices who are advocating for Palestinian rights and aspirations, the Palestinian issue and cause have tragically and painfully become a dumbing ground for violent terrorists and deranged scum across the world, attracting foul personalities and characters seeking a sense of meaning and notoriety. How can the people of Gaza or Palestine possibly benefit from such a heinous random act of violence? What if I or non-Israelis in attendance were hurt by the assailant?
Violence begets violence; antisemitism is evil and must be rejected; sloganeering and divisive rhetoric can and do have deadly consequences; incitement and promotion of political violence only end in chaos, pain, tragedy, and loss for all.
Now is a really good time to make it clear that no matter the issue or cause dividing various communities, we must stand in clear and united opposition to political violence of any kind. Anyone seeking to justify what happened tonight or play mental gymnastics in defense of this indefensible act is a legitimate and bona fide terrorist and must be shunned and treated as such.
You, who are a person I know only through professional connections, responded to this thusly:
There's so much violence on both sides. For instance, as we speak Israelis are starving thousands of Palestinian babies to death, within a matter of hours from now, according to expert estimates. Similarly, Palestinians are starving how many Israeli babies to death at the same time, do you think? It's really important that we keep focusing on BOTH sides of the violence because otherwise . . . he (sic) situation might start to seem asymmetrical
Here, you seem to be citing the already-at-that-point discredited statement by the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher that "There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them." You can be forgiven for not knowing that both the BBC and the UN have since retracted this claim, given that the retractions got almost no coverage, while the original and false claim was reported widely4. You can also be forgiven for joining the cacophony of voices that hold Israel alone responsible for the food shortages, in spite of the ample evidence that when this aid enters Gaza, it is stolen and hoarded by Hamas, which uses it to continue its assault on Israel. Why would you know these things, when our media ignores them in order to tell a deeply misleading story about the war both in its current iteration and in its long history.
You cannot be forgiven for your flippant dismissal of these murders, or the unequivocally antisemitic nature of your statement.
My initial response to you reads:
(Name Redacted) it's really interesting to me that you feel comfortable writing, apparently, in support of the political murder of two people in response to a post from someone who is Jewish who you know only in a professional context, and who is sharing a post by a Palestinian activist who I assume you do not know at all. Particularly given that both Ahmed and I are calling for the need for the security and self-determination of all the people in the region. I wonder what you are calling for, and what actual work you are doing to bring about whatever that is?
To which you responded:
Sarah Einstein Comfortable? Absolutely not. What I am is mortified by what I perceive to be constant deflection from greater scales of violence to smaller scales of violence, a deflection that, whether internationally (sic?) or not, reinforces a hierarchy of human value where the lives and deaths of some people vastly outweigh the lives and deaths of others. I do apologize for expressing my mortification with sarcasm. I will see myself out.
It’s ironic to me that your specialties are Creative Writing and Writing Studies, and yet you fail to see the obvious-on-its-face logical flaw in your own argument here. A friend5 responded to you, pointing this out, with:
I think one way to not reinforce "a hierarchy of human value where the lives and deaths of some people vastly outweigh the lives and deaths of others" is to honor those who were killed without changing the subject.
At least spare a thought for those the post was actually talking about first? It's totally possible to empathize with multiple sides.
But I doubt you ever saw that response, because by then, to avoid accountability for what you had written, you had “unfriended” me.
Now, to the point of this open letter.
You are exactly the sort of “Pro-Palestinian” American “activist6” that Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib spends his time trying to bring to the side of a pragmatic resolution for the people of Gaza.
I care deeply about the future of both Israelis and Palestinians, and I am one of the vast majority of Zionists who believe that mutually assured security and self-determination are the only possible path forward for either people. So, by the way, was Sarah Milgrim.
According to reporting from The New Yorker:
Sarah Milgrim was someone who knew “exactly what she wanted out of life,” according to people who knew her well. She was an idealist who invested herself in Jewish life, and in the future of Israel. At her high school, in the suburbs of Kansas City, she was a member of the Jewish Student Union; as a senior, she was interviewed by a local news station after someone spray-painted swastikas on a school building. “I worry about going to my synagogue,” she said. “And now I have to worry about safety at my school.”
Later, at the University of Kansas, she was on the board of her campus Hillel chapter and went on a Birthright trip to Israel. In graduate school at American University and the U.N.’s University for Peace, where she focussed on sustainable development, she got involved in Tech2Peace, an N.G.O. that brings together young Israelis and Palestinians for training in Israel’s high-tech industry (emphasis mine). She later joined the American Jewish Committee’s young-professionals program. She considered working for U.S.A.I.D. Shortly after the October 7th attacks on Israel, though, she went to work for the Israeli Embassy in D.C. “She felt really strongly about improving the world and leaving it better than she found it,” Dana Walker, the director of the American Jewish Committee program, told me.
The majority of both American and Israeli Jews support a ceasefire (though not an unconditional, permanent one) and continue to hope for a resolution to this war that will allow for the building of security, prosperity, and self-determination for all the peoples7 in the land. Sarah Milgrim was one such person, and her life’s work was to build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians toward that goal.
You, on the other hand, seem determined to burn any bridges being built. I never got an answer as to what end, so I will have to hazard a guess, but it’s an educated one. I suspect you would call yourself an anti-Zionist, and that you believe the state of Israel should be dissolved. This means, beyond any possible doubt, that you are the person calling for genocide.
Here are the irrefutable truth. There are currently nine million Israelis who would be displaced. Only about 10% of Israeli citizens hold dual citizenship, usually acquired later in life through inheritance or immigration to another country. This means just over 8 million Israelis would have to be relocated. There is no nation or group of nations in the world expressing any willingness to absorb them as refugees, and no country in the region to which they could flee. Many Israelis are Israeli precisely because they have had to flee the surrounding countries. (Do not imagine that the two million Arab Israelis would be welcomed to live in the resulting nation; Hamas murders anyone they believe to be a “collaborator” with Israel, which would undoubtedly include the two million Arab Israelis. Don’t believe me? Believe Amnesty International, which is famously biased against Israel.) The only way a fully Palestinian state in the territory comes about is through actual genocide, then.
But of course Israel won’t be “dissolved.” In fact, the UN Charter protects the territorial integrity of its member states, and forbids the involuntary dissolution of member states. Nor does Hamas, even in concert with Iran and the Houthis8, have the military might to capture the territory. This means the pursuit of a fully Palestinian nation on the land now controlled by Israel can only prolong the war and only result in more death on both sides. Is that really what you’re advocating? I’ll admit, it sure seems like it.
We are, you and I, English Studies academics. Neither of us has the power to bring about the resolution of this conflict, but each of us has the ability to hinder those who do have that power, including people like Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. I have worked since the start of this to elevate the voices of those working toward a future of shared security; you apparently prefer to shout down those voices. So I ask you, which of us is more morally culpable for the continued death and fighting? Which of us is actually working for peace?
Sincerely,
Your colleague, Sarah
I have decided not to name this colleague, or the literary journal at which he is an editor, here. To do otherwise strikes me as a form of doxxing, since as academics we are both easily findable online. As someone who was doxxed by right-wing activists for (of all things) attending a rally after Charlottesville to say, “Uhm, Nazis are bad, actually,” I am particularly sensitive to the harms this can bring. That said, this person did make these comments on a Facebook post I shared elevating the voice of Palestinian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib about the harm this will do to the peace process, so he’s only as anonymous here as he has allowed himself to be.
I give everyone who disagrees with me this show of respect at the outset. It’s a truism of the early 21st century that we have all had our desire to be good people weaponized by those who would use this impulse to advance evil agenda. I have, in the past, fallen into this trap, and am constantly checking in with wise people in my communities (hi Mom!) to check my understandings of world and national events.
Please note that a number of Palestinian activists have asked American “allies” to acknowledge that this act of terrorism is both immoral and, on a pragmatic basis, harmful to their cause. (I say “their” here, because I fear if I say “our,” my inclusion of myself will make you disregard these Palestinian voices, as it apparently did on my posting. I remain baffled by the literary parts of the literary community that happily silence even Palestinian voices when they call for moderation. However, I most certainly count myself as among those who want to see Palestinians live safe, prosperous lives, both because it is right and because I believe the safety of Israelis and Jews around the world depend on ending this decades-long conflict.)
This is a well-documented pattern of anti-Israel bias in Western media reporting on the Hamas-Israel war, dating back to before Israel even began its counter-offensive. This, to me, makes it difficult to hold individuals morally accountable for their deeply flawed understanding of the situation.
Also keeping this friend, who is an actual I-know-her-in-person friend and not just a professional acquaintance, because I’m writing this early on a Sunday morning and don’t want to bother her to ask permission to use her name. In truth, I fully believe she wouldn’t mind, but consent matters.
I don’t actually think shit-posting at random colleagues counts as activism.
There is a gross misperception that Israelis are primarily Jews with recent European ancestry. This isn’t true. According to the CIA, the ethnic breakdown of Israeli citizenship is “Jewish 73.5% (of which Israel-born 79.7%, Europe/America/Oceania-born 14.3%, Africa-born 3.9%, Asia-born 2.1%), Arab 21.1%, other 5.4% (2022 est.)” Mizrahi Jews, whose most recent ancestry (and in some cases, continuous ancestry) is from MENA nations. Below is an infographic from the Pew Research Center of the self-identified religious affiliation of Israeli citizens.
Please note that Hezbollah, once Israel’s most capable enemy, is no longer an issue.