Killing Jews Will Not Free Gaza

The recent murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram outside the Captial Jewish Museum in Washington, DC on May 21, and the burning that injured eight people at a demonstration for Israeli hostages of Hamas in Boulder, CO, on June 1 have been claimed by their perpetrators as acts of political protest aimed at “Freeing Palestine.” But the antisemitic taking of Jewish lives simply because they are Jewish can never achieve anything but more antisemitism.

I have written before about the central Jewish teaching that encourages us to empathize with the marginalized and powerless, not only when we ourselves are marginalized and powerless, but even after we have been liberated.

Liberation cannot be achieved by killing every single Jewish person because they are a Jewish person. The attacks in DC and in Colorado both trade in the very dehumanization, prejudice, and indiscriminate killing that Gazans are suffering from right now.

Calling for the return of Israeli hostages, who have been in captivity, some of them in near-complete darkness, since October 7, 2023, does not equal calling for the continued indiscriminate killing of Palestinian innocents. Calling for an end to Hamas’s murderous and antisemitic violence does not equal seeking the eradication of an entire people.

Genocide is wrong, any way you cut it. Attacking Jews because we are Jews, whether we are grocery shopping or visiting a museum or calling for the return of our family members from Hamas captivity, will not prevent genocide. It will only fan the flames of hatred.