Now all the poetry will be for Gaza

The obliterating mindset of Israel’s war on Gaza is driving a wedge differently through our community. Palestine is firmly embraced by those who believe there is some law and empathy left to call on. The Jewish community stands in the company of the Free Speech Union and Destiny Church. The Jewish institutions of Aotearoa have yet to object or get to grips with their fellow travellers.

While they drift, Israel obliterates.

Gaza has among the world’s highest rates of literacy. Israel has destroyed every one of its universities as if to obliterate any prospect of children’s future.

Gaza was a community of neighbours, of deeply interwoven connections that held people in place. Israel has driven over a million people from their homes and blown up more than half of Gaza’s residences as if to obliterate any possibility of again being safe within four familiar walls.

As if to deny Gaza’s very humanity, Israel is now attacking hospitals. Overnight, Medecins Sans Frontieres has stated: “At the time of writing, our staff are witnessing people being shot at as they attempt to flee the Al-Shifa hospital.” Israel would obliterate the very possibility of healing.

Israel’s blockade had already rendered Gaza dependent upon our world’s laws, aid and frankly its sense of shame. Now Israel is waging war on the whole international framework of harm limitation. They have targeted ambulances and now hospitals, shattered civilian and lifesaving infrastructure, refused the essentials of life to two million people with no hope of escape, blown up mosques and churches. In the full view of cameras, Israel is obliterating a community and daring the world to care.

Thus far, the voices which purport to represent the New Zealand Jewish community are harnessing this obliterating mindset to their local agenda. Our silent institutions appear to acquiesce if not to support the destruction of Gaza in utter defiance of law, Jewish prayer and empathy. If this continues, they will find themselves in the company of people who cheer Israel on for their own purposes, not from the slightest love of Jews.

Israel’s campaign and its supporters are driving a new wedge through our community, reflecting the global shift. The Jewish community is being positioned among Israel’s anti-human rights fellow travellers, while we who protest find ourselves among larger and larger crowds. The street, the young, tens of thousands of people who have not been involved before are repelled by the slaughter they see, and by our absentee government which has let it go so far. That it takes so long for our government to follow its people is a disgrace, but follow they will.

The Jewish community must situate itself within this new moral geography. We are not now the victims. Older Jews have grown up reading the poetry and the agonised reflections of a Jewish community wondering how to live with the indifference that had permitted genocide against us. We saw a generational crisis of faith and our parents’ fear of ever being at ease in a world that had stood back and looked down its nose at the surviving Jewish refugees.

That powerlessness is not our landscape now. Licensed by the world’s shame, riding on Western fear and suspicion of Muslims, Zionist Israel today is an obliterating war criminal. Its leaders flaunt their genocidal intent.

The institutions of our Jewish community have yet to make this leap: our community is not now divided between pro- and anti-Zionism. Now we are divided between those who condemn war crimes and those who don’t; between those who can be for the rights of all and those who are only for themselves.

Israel’s crimes will fail, just as the crimes against us failed. Israel’s atrocities will fail on their own terms: no one here or there will be made safe by these bombs. Neither can Israel obliterate the Palestine that it cannot bear to co-exist with. For all the rubble of Gaza, human belonging is not confined to four walls. Learning is not done only in a classroom. The people entombed within the canyons and mounds of concrete will be honoured and remembered.

There is no military solution because the spirit of liberation cannot be obliterated. Palestine now embodies that spirit. Now all the poetry will be for Palestine.

To whatever degree the Jewish community continues to passively give permission for all this, the community trades its soul for a flag. When institutions are coopted by Israel’s acts of obliterating power; Jews of conscience, soul and aroha form new communities of values.

More Jews are linking arms with Palestinians around the world than ever before. In our shared, life-loving protest lie the seeds of a response to this wounded time.

Cease fire now. Aid Gaza now. Free Palestine now.

Marilyn Garson and Fred Albert, co-founders of AJV

Justine Sachs, co-founder of Dayenu

Sue Berman