By JODY BENSON
Los Alamos
I am not antisemitic.
No, I am not antisemitic even though I stand against Israel’s decimation of Gaza.
I attest to the fact that Hamas, elected in 2006, is a totalitarian regime whose military wing the US has designated a terrorist organization.
I attest Hamas does not recognize Israel, and that since 1993, it has committed suicide bombings on Israel in retribution against the Israeli 1967 occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank.
I attest that on October 7, 2023, Hamas led other Palestinian militant nationalist groups in a terrorist attack in the Gaza Envelope that killed 766 civilians and 373 Security Forces.
No, I am not antisemitic even though I attest Amnesty International’s report that as of December 5, 2024, Israel has retaliated for the 1139 Israelis and foreign nationals murdered during the Simchat Torah Massacre by killing 44,500 Gazans.
No, I am not antisemitic even though I call the Israeli obliteration of Gazan cities, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, infrastructure, and citizens, genocide.
No, I am not antisemitic; I am joining governments, UN agencies, and non-governmental agencies to stand against this genocide in Gaza.
No, I am not antisemitic; I am calling for the US government to stop providing arms used in Israel’s deliberate goal of removing the Palestinian people who already suffered mass displacement and dispossession when they were removed from their homeland during the 1948 Nakba.
No, I am not antisemitic. I am anti-genocide.
I was born just eleven days before Israel. I grew up knowing the Holocaust is fact, that Jews who were good citizens contributing to the culture and economy of whatever European state they lived in were first stripped of rights, then of property, then rounded up and jammed into ghettos before being shipped off to concentration camps. I was a Zionist cheering the nation full of heroes like David of the Bible fighting off its giant Arab neighbors and making the desert bloom. When I was in Israel, we the powerful youth worked by day and danced at the start of Shabbat.
No, I am not antisemitic, but genocide is genocide. “Never again” means “Never again for anyone”. Even Palestinians.
No, I am not antisemitic. I am not anti-Israel. I stand against indiscriminate killing and cultural eradication with the final solution of ethnic cleansing, no matter which nation is the perpetrator: Syria, Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Russia, China, the US…Israel.
So no, I am not antisemitic. I am anti-genocide. With all those other genociding nations and terrorist organizations, however, the US has no direct control. With Israel, we do. We can demand that our government—we—cut arms shipments so our bombs don’t continue the systematic decimation of Gaza. You can’t genocide terrorism. Terrorism is an idea. With every child killed, you create a family committed to revenge. The only way to fight terrorism is with justice. Justice requires that we make our way a better way than theirs. Ceasefire. Release the hostages. Rebuild all that we destroyed into a free and prosperous state of Palestine.
I am not antisemitic. I am anti-genocide. And I attest right now, if the white supremacists loosed under the new US administration come for you, I will stand with you, too.