'You Need to Make a Choice'

Except it's not a choice. It's a trap.

Last week, Seattle Times columnist Naomi Ishisaka dropped her fourth column in two years about Gaza.

Titled “‘You need to make a choice’ about Gaza. Last Sunday, 1,700 people did,” the opinion piece covered a 5k in the Seattle area on August 3rd to raise money for UNRWA.

What is the choice you need to make? It’s not clearly stated, but the author sets it up: You need to choose to side with Gaza. Because if you’re not standing with Gaza, you’re standing with genocide.

The column opens:

I used to think that regardless of any political differences, there were some universal truths about humanity.

I used to think that across all nationalities and beliefs, if a child was wandering into the street in front of an incoming car, it was a core human instinct of every human adult to grab the child and get them to safety.

Now, I know better.

This deeply cynical view of the world suggests that what she has learned is that anyone who supports Israel supports the death of children. Not caring about these children’s deaths constitutes a loss of “moral clarity,” “one of the many casualties of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Ishisaka, who lives in a Pacific Northwest ideological forest bath (she has a degree in ethnic studies and journalism from The Evergreen State College), cannot possibly understand the degree to which Hamas propaganda turns reality inside out and how “moral clarity” has been distorted.

Bless her heart. She cannot penetrate the depth of actual cynicism it takes to use children as human shields, to build a network of tunnels under civilians with entrances in children’s bedrooms — yet no bomb shelters for the population above. She cannot imagine a world in which children are encouraged from infancy to kill and die for a cause — in schools run by the United Nations. She must not know about the conditions of Palestinian refugee descendants in Lebanon and Jordan, where they are intentionally kept in abject poverty in a multi-generational game of corrupt political chess with human lives.

She has likely not read any credible books on Jewish or Middle East history. She has not, to my knowledge, interviewed mainstream local Jewish leaders and rabbis, men and women who barely sleep because they are working around the clock to respond to fears and concerns from their constituents and congregants.

So, surely, she does not realize how these opening lines caress a medieval blood libel, one that has infiltrated much of the Arab world via Soviet and Nazi propaganda: Jews sacrifice children and enjoy it.

It’s okay. “You need to make a choice” are words spoken by a Jewish community member who attended the event. It is of no concern to this columnist that all but one synagogue in the Seattle area wholeheartedly support the existence of the Jewish state. Good Jews in, bad Jews out.

We are being assaulted with choices. Specifically, The Choice. Not a simple choice of peace versus war or Israel versus its enemies. No: A false choice to side with Hamas or to be labeled a genocide enabler. Blind yourself to the gleeful sadism and stunning lies and sleights of hand of terrorists, or align yourself with the evil machinations of genocidal child murderers. Support evil or be called evil. Your choice.

It’s a form of psychological warfare. Do you want children to die?

We are so desperate to prove that the answer is “no” that we allow ourselves to get tricked into playing this sick game.

While many Jews are honestly wrestling with Israel’s relationship to power — including the Jewish person quoted in the column, I’m sure — the choice facing us is absolute. Our nuance and complexity and soul searching are pitted against absolutism, and the absolutists are setting the terms. So, you can take your nuance and complexity and soul searching and shove it.

Are Muslims presented with The Choice the way Jews are? Are they asked to separate their national and religious ideologies? Any why not? It’s considered a given that a Muslim, no matter which Islamic supremacist ethnostate he or she hails from originally, supports the dispossession of the Jewish state as an article of faith. I recently read someone describe Gaza as the “crown jewel” of Islam. Not Baghdad. Not Cairo. Not Dubai or Istanbul. Not Mecca. Gaza. When did “free Palestine” get added to the shahada?

The column also features Sabrene Odeh, a local activist whose grandparents fled their home in Jerusalem in 1948. In a profile on local NPR affiliate KUOW in November 2023, Odeh is praised for her nuanced approach to Palestine and her belief in coexistence:

“When we say we want our land back from the river to the sea, what we’re saying is we want to have full governance of our human rights from the river to the sea,” she said. “We don’t want any outside influence or decision-making or interference by any occupying power.”

That doesn’t sound like coexistence. It sounds like a nationalistic vision of what likely would become a fascist state. But don’t be confused into thinking she supports violence, that she could possibly support the attacks of October 7th in this sympathetic interview from one month afterward. In her own words:

“Any time in which Palestinians resist their occupation in any way, there is an immediate, disproportionate response that typically leads to loss of civilian lives”….

“So, when I heard about what was happening on Oct. 7, I was terrified that what we’re watching now, the genocide that we’ve been watching for the last month, was going to unfold.”

What, exactly, does “resisting the occupation” mean? Why doesn’t the reporter ask her that? Incredibly, Odeh turns the raping, stabbing, shooting, and burning alive of civilians by men inspired by a recognized religious terrorist organization into an act of noble resistance against an occupation that doesn’t even exist, and calls the response a genocide. Talk about sleights of hand. Give this girl a magic show.

While Jews must answer for their history and their present, Odeh gets adulation from the local press for holding her emotions together while she channels the trauma of her grandparents’ exile from British-occupied Jerusalem to Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem.

Somehow somehow only Jews are forced to put their identities into a sieve to shake out any allegiance to Israel. And if you don’t do it yourself, we’ll do it for you. Your choice!

I can count on two hands the number of Muslims who publicly recognize Israel or support meaningful, peaceful solutions. Most of them are considered apostates. One was arrested and exiled from Egypt for supporting the idea of Zionism. One is gay and had to escape Yemen and get asylum in Sweden. A few have converted to Christianity. One even converted to Judaism. Local Jewish leaders have told me, quietly, how disheartened they were that local Muslim leaders didn’t reach out after October 7th.

By the way, here’s a story about diversity and marginalized people that picked up tons of local attention. And by tons, I mean none.

According to Hussein Aboubaker Mansour, the Egyptian outcast:

There’s a new generation today of Western Arabs who grew up in the US, speak English and understand how to take advantage of the system […] They were brought up to honor the edicts of Islam even though they are completely secular. People like that are, in fact, the driving force behind BDS. They run an anti-Israel campaign in American academia, but they also have an anti-US campaign.

The American far left, with its blinding disgust toward capitalism and power, is so easily seduced by the illusion that “no one is free until everyone is free” that it trips and falls right into this ideological pit. Swaddled in a blanket of post-modernism, they are nonplussed by words that have no meaning and ideas built upon faulty foundations.

Here is Mansour, again, on the topic of the “intellectual supply chain” that flows through academics and journalists:

The process works as follows: the “native” critical intellectual in a Muslim or Arab revolutionary context generates acts of resistance — military, political, or cultural — against Western power, capitalism, and Zionism. These acts, and the narratives surrounding them, are received in the West as raw “input” by sympathetic academics, journalists, and activists.

The Western critical intellectual then reframes these actions as legitimate resistance against the global structure of capitalist exploitation and imperial domination. The religious, illiberal, and often authoritarian nature of these movements is not ignored so much as bracketed — treated as a historically contingent detail that will dissolve in the long arc of liberation. In the meantime, such movements are re-imagined as exotic ornaments that add authenticity, diversity, and revolutionary vigor to the West’s own radicalizing theories of anti-capitalism, anti-Westernism, and anti-Zionism.

Our “choice” is to step into the role that’s been written for us in this script. It’s to accept the inversion of reality and the obfuscation of language that is being forced upon us. This is a reality in which “from the river to the sea” can “mean different things to different people.” “Intifada revolution” is not a call to inflict maximum carnage in civilian areas; it means “shaking off,” as if it’s pop hit about an ex-boyfriend and the excesses of fame.

October 7th didn’t happen. But if it did, it was justified. What were Gazans supposed to do to push back on the brutal military occupation that turned Gaza into an open-air prison? Now look, Israel has wantonly destroyed a beautiful, idyllic, free land. Israel created Hamas. Hamas only attacked soldiers. All civilians are soldiers. Israel killed its own citizens. The genocide started October 7th. The genocide started in 1948. Violence is sacred; we will fight even if we all die. Ceasefire now! Glory to the martyrs!

This swirling stew of logical fallacies and falsehoods is what we are stupidly wasting our mental energy on, slowly going insane, fighting propaganda-infused feelings with annotated books. Nice Americans cannot comprehend that Islamist propaganda has crossed a porous intellectual border and influenced “diversity, equity, and inclusion” work.

This is not DEI. This is a Damascus Affair.

The Damascus Affair, the 1840 case of a monk and his Muslim assistant who allegedly went missing in the Jewish quarter of Damascus, and the subsequent accusations of Jews killing them and using their blood for matzah — a medieval blood libel that crossed into the Arab Middle East from Christian history — resulted in a forced confession, 63 Jewish children taken hostage, several deaths, and the pillaging of a synagogue and the destruction of its Torah scrolls.

The accusation that the Jewish state, which was obviously drawn into a war by a self-proclaimed genocidal entity, is not only killing children but apparently reveling in it is a modern extension of this blood libel. According to a 2013 article in Arutz Sheva, the historic blood libel is alive and well even in some Israeli Arab communities. “When the Palestinians talk about the IDF killing Arab children, it is the theme of the blood libel they have in mind, and it is that image they want to convey to Europe,” says Professor Moshe Sharon of Hebrew University.

But what about the actual dying children? Their deaths are as tragic as they are avoidable. Sadly, they are being invoked as a rhetorical trap. They function as a decoy, a logical human shield. Strap the bomb to the child and tell the Jews that they are holding the detonator. Laugh as the Jews turn their pockets inside out to show you that their hands are empty.

As The Free Press reported this week, simple Googling and fact checking revealed that at least a dozen of the emaciated Gazan children paraded by mainstream news organizations as victims of Israel’s starvation campaign had critical illnesses that the reports left out. Healthy children existed right outside of the photo crop. Why? Because Hamas is losing, and it needs a sympathy infusion. It needs a cash infusion. Its strength is attached by umbilical cord to the idea that Israel wants to kill women and children. It’s a cynicism I can hardly bear to type. Which brings us back to the UNWRA fundraiser in Marymoor Park on August 3rd.

Actually, Naomi Ishisaka’s original belief in humanity is right. It’s especially right in Israel, where people care for other people’s children on a level that would actually make most Americans need to put up “boundaries.” It’s even true between most Israeli Jews and Arabs. Like last summer, when I was posing for a selfie in Jerusalem with my daughters. A woman in hijab approached me. My defenses perked up. Then she asked: “want me to take your picture?” Oh. Shukran.

JFC. Of course we would all try to save a child.

The question should be, how can we get this impossible situation over with as quickly as possible? Nobody wants this war. Nobody wants innocent people to die. This is a given. We all agree on this. But inside this hijacked idea bus, you are not being asked to side with peace; you are being asked to side with evil that’s holding a white flag. Stop thinking you’re going to win by explaining your humanity to someone who will not grant it to you unless you acknowledge that words have different meanings and history is not historical and evil is justice. The game is rigged.

There is another choice.

In a few weeks, we will read parashat Netzavim, at the end of Deuteronomy:

הַֽעִדֹ֨תִי בָכֶ֣ם הַיּוֹם֘ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַ֣יִם וְאֶת־הָאָ֒רֶץ֒ הַֽחַיִּ֤ים וְהַמָּ֨וֶת֙ נָתַ֣תִּי לְפָנֶ֔יךָ הַבְּרָכָ֖ה וְהַקְּלָלָ֑ה וּבָֽחַרְתָּ֙ בַּֽחַיִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן תִּֽחְיֶ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ:

On this day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.

Here’s the real choice. Follow the Torah and be close to the Jewish people in all its richness and intellectual depth and values and contributions and angst and annoying problems.

Remember that the laws of the Torah, though they may seem outdated, are a blueprint for humanity. They are the blueprint for the universal humanity that Naomi Ishisaka used to believe in: Take care of orphans and widows. Don’t work your animals too hard. Don’t sleep with your relatives. Don’t sacrifice your children. Also, don’t fall for stupid ideas or follow people who will lead you astray from these values. Don’t bear false witness. Don’t worship idols. Don’t place a stumbling block before the blind. Cover a pit so no one falls into it.

It goes without saying that the people whose history is recorded in a book of arguments is going to continue arguing about how to apply these laws. So I’m not talking right now to the Jewish people who think Israel is actually responsible for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza or needs to deal with settler violence in the West Bank. That is a separate discussion.

What we cannot do is allow historical anti-Jewish propaganda to distract us from our purpose on earth, which is about speaking truth to power more than any coffee shop Marxist thinks she can. Blood libels die hard. Staying close to the eternal wisdom of the Torah and the Tanakh reminds us that hatred and lies never go away, but we will survive.

Shabbat shalom.

Cover photo by Dickelburs/Wikimedia Commons

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