Why, For Me, Being a Jew Means Being for Palestine

I was not raised with any religion except that of justice. My father’s parents escaped Germany at the beginning of the Holocaust. They were both devout atheists and marxists. My mother’s grandmother came here to escape the pogroms in Russia. She became a Christian Scientist. Her father came here from Poland to escape poverty and anti-Semitism. I was raised around hippies, Buddhists, lapsed Catholics, and atheist Christians and Jews. I didn’t know there was such thing as “being Jewish” until I was a teenager and then I knew it by this family history of escaping oppression, by the stubbornness of my hair, my olive skin, by my love of arguments and outsiders.

What I have since learned is that being a Jew means, in part, being scared. Actually, being human in an inhumane world means being scared (and angry and murderous and loving) and Jews are no more or less scared (or angry, or murderous, or loving) than anyone else. Like people of color, like women, like poor folks the world over, people in power have tried to get rid of Jews and survival has become our knock-bottom response. But the Israeli Occupation does not keep Jews safe, anymore than this war-without-end, this “war on terrorism” keeps America safe. Our survival cannot depend on another people’s oppression. True safety only comes with justice and equality.