(Update: Apparently some people are left still unclear on my position after reading this post. As a descendant of genocide survivors, I oppose the killing and genocide of all peoples, regardless of nationality, race, or creed. I pray that all senseless acts of violence end, in the Middle East, and across the world. Secondly, I encourage you to read this piece with an open heart, and engage it as you would like any other piece of art.)
I’m currently undergoing the humbling and nerve-wracking process of asking people to endorse my book.
On the whole, it’s been an incredibly affirming process, and I’ve found myself occasionally in awe at people’s generosity, praise, and willingness to lend their support. I feel beyond lucky to have such wonderful colleagues, mentors, and friends.
But recently, I had an experience that troubled me deeply. I asked a friend, someone who had been a stalwart supporter of this project from the beginning, if they would write a short endorsement. After all, they’d enthusiastically edited entire chapters for me in the past. Why wouldn’t they show up for the easiest part?
Their answer was a cold, hard no. When I asked for clarification, they let me know that they were no longer working with or supporting people who were not “speaking out” against the war in Gaza. Apparently, I was on their list.
I invited them to read my recent Substack piece where I expressed my feelings on the matter, and how I believe ecstasy and mysticism does indeed have a part to play in true activism. I let that piece simmer within me for weeks, until I felt I could express the full spectrum of my emotions properly. That is my process.
They declined. I was shocked, and hurt. Not by their refusal to write the blurb, but by the apparent ease at which they etched my name onto an immutable tablet of ideological betrayal. Apparently, having a list of “enemies of the cause” is fashionable in certain social-justice circles. (What could go wrong?)
And while I am hurt, I am not surprised. Social media has become a panopticon of political performance. We don’t need a dystopian “social-point” system imposed on us, like they do in China. We will impose it on ourselves, filtered through whatever ideology is favored by the algorithm that month. Apparently, my performance didn’t make the cut. Better post another story on Instagram. Surely, that will change things.
I’ve been asked by many friends where I “stand” on what’s going on in Israel and Palestine. As a Jewish person, there’s a sense that I should have a firm opinion, that I should have a simplistic “stance.”
I reject the premise, because it implies that picking a place to stand will somehow help resolve these ancient conflicts, rather than fuel them. It assumes that more outrage is warranted for a situation where the only reasonable thing to do is weep. As if there is any solid ground to stand on at all, especially for those of us with ancestral ties to this globally-relevant conflict.
But I will say this:
I’ve traveled all over the world, to countries buckling under the weight of dictatorships, struggling under post-apocalyptic economies, barely breathing beneath military juntas.
The only place I’ve ever had a loaded gun pointed at me was in Israel.
One night, while standing outside the Lion’s Gate, looking out towards East Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, a twenty-something year-old military police officer cocked his assault rifle and pointed it at my face. The metallic clack of the bullet locking into its chamber felt like a stone in my stomach. I heard the same bone-rattling sound echoing from the other soldiers positioned around me.
With a relaxed twitch of his finger, that bullet could have traveled from his gun into my skull in a fraction of a second.
I lived in East Jerusalem - a predominantly Palestinian area - for about a month in late 2012. Walking through groves of gnarled, ancient olive trees, I would watch as the graffiti became stark, assertive Arabic scrawled in black across white concrete. It was a tense place to live, but I loved it.
I found myself staying in the guest house of a famous Palestinian Sheikh and peace activist, Haj Ibrahim Abu El Hawa. Known across the world as one of the few Palestinian leaders still engaging in interfaith peace dialogs, Haj Ibrahim was from a family of Bedouins whose ancestors had lived atop the Mount of Olives for 1400 years. “Welcome! Eat!” he would announce, as his immense presence entered the home. He would regularly leave small kibbehs and fresh hummus for the rag-tag group of travelers that wandered in from the desert.
He never asked for money. His hostel, called the “Peace House,” was by donation, and open to all faiths, races, creeds, and identities. Hospitality is a core value of the Bedouin, and traditionally everyone is welcomed and fed in the Bedouin culture for three days. Then, and only then, is it permissible to ask a traveler what their purpose is, and how long they are staying.
One night, Haj Ibrahim whisked me and a quiet Englishman into a private car that abruptly descended into downtown Jerusalem, to a small street in a posh neighborhood. I had no idea where we were going. We entered a white, stucco building through the back door. Suddenly we were in front of a huge crowd of people.
I sat on the floor as the beautiful tones of the oud, ney, comancha, and dumbek conjured entrancing melodies that I can still hear in my dreams. Eventually, I figured out that Haj had brought us to an interfaith peace concert, and that he was the guest of honor. At the end of the night, he gave an impassioned speech in Hebrew, alongside a luminous, wheelchair bound rabbi, clothed in white. I would later learn that this was Rabbi Menachem Froman, a revered spiritual leader who died only a few months later.
Another night, later into my stay, I was walking home along the road that hugged the walls outside the Temple Mount-arguably the most contentious ground on the planet--ground zero for a millennia of religious conflict. Suddenly, a white, unmarked van pulled up beside me, its metal door quickly sliding open, a flashlight blinding my eyes. An angry voice demanded to know where I was from and what my name was and what I was doing there, first in Hebrew, then in heavily accented Israeli-English.
Welcome home indeed.
I’ve been critical of the Israeli state long before it was en vogue to be so. I’ve engaged in countless arguments with my father and many family friends at the dinner table. I’ve discussed it at length with Israeli friends, many of whom had left their homeland, never wishing to return. For as long as I can remember, I’ve opposed the plainly unethical treatment that Palestinians are subject to, and have seen it with my own eyes.
From a psychological perspective, it is beyond clear to me, and anyone paying attention, that the Israeli nation is displacing its trauma onto its ancient neighbors. We always hurt those closest to us. This is not news.
It is also an apartheid state, placing Palestinians and Arab-Jews as second-class citizens who are subject to police searches and interrogation at a moments notice. I say this not because of recent events, but from personal experience. I’ve witnessed shakedowns and interrogations by the Israeli military at the West Bank border. I’ve listened to the unending sagas of Haj Ibrahim’s struggles with the Israeli government to simply add a bedroom to his ancestral home. I’ve had loaded weapons pointed at my face by the military of a country that supposedly exists to keep me safe.
So please, don’t tell me, as an American Jew, how I am supposed to feel right now.
And as I write this, I am struck by a set of images from my childhood: armed police officers standing guard outside a NW Portland synagogue as my family walks through crisp fall leaves, arriving for Rosh Hashanah services. Even at 10 years old, I understood that having armed police officers around swarms of Jewish people somehow made sense.
Even as a child, I knew that it was not safe to be Jewish.
I didn’t like being raised Jewish. I resisted it at every turn, and was begrudgingly Bar Mitzvah’d because I thought I’d have a cool party afterwards. But one thing I did retain from my Jewish upbringing was this: human life is sacred. I’m no theology scholar, but I’m pretty sure you can’t argue with this one.
And yet, governments - yes, your government - continue to ship billions of dollars of weapons across the seas, fueling a multitude of clandestine conflicts I promise you’re not even aware of. You- yes you- continue to benefit from these policies, despite how many Instagram posts you passionately share. Innocent people continue to be massacred for being born on the wrong side of a wall.
We are all complicit in our ignorance. We are all guilty. We are all innocent. We are all victims. We are all perpetrators.
I still refuse to take a “stand” on the issue. Rather, I bow down to it, humbling myself to something far greater than any ideology or activist cause-de-jour. I sit in meditative posture in front of it, absorbing the horror and imagery and factoids that assault my awareness like a Buddhist hell realm. I lay down before it, letting it dance upon me, like wrathful Kali dances upon Shiva, upon the ego that thinks it knows best, when in reality it knows nothing.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing, leaving a comment, and subscribing to this substack.
I respect this outpouring of feeling and perspective. Weeping along with you because, as you say, it is ‘the only reasonable thing to do’.
Thank you for sharing Simon. I appreciate the way you share your direct experiences, your perspectives and for standing in your truth by actually putting it out there for others to receive, or not.
It takes courage to be honest about how you just are not willing to “take a side,” whatever that means…and yet still honor your truth that you don’t agree with the occupation, especially being Jewish, and also name the psychological trauma roots of the whole thing. Which when I look at it, makes painfully obvious and utterly devastating sense.
And this is humanity.
Fighting…for peace.
Thanks for reaching out to us all in your beautiful and brave way.
💛