We thank the Point Reyes Light for the opportunity to offer our perspective on the Israel-Hamas war and on what we perceive as local antisemitism. We are Jewish, have family and friends in Israel, and lived and worked there for years, including four summers excavating Jewish history. Judy lived through two wars and a summer of shelling of the kibbutz where she was volunteering, by Syrians who then controlled the Golan Heights. We love Israel and criticize her, including Jewish settler anti-Palestinian aggression and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attempt to undermine democratic institutions.
We returned recently from a month-long visit to comfort distraught family and friends. Wide swathes of northern and southern Israel are evacuated because of ongoing attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. The Oct. 7 attacks were similar in scale and viciousness to the World War II pogroms that heralded concentration camps and the murder of six million Jews. The popular Palestinian decree, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which can be heard at local demonstrations, implies the death of Israel and her Jewish population. The Times of Israel, an English-language daily, says the economy has contracted by 20 percent since Oct. 7. Antisemitism proliferates, including in the United States. Many Jews are apprehensive about the call in Hamas’s charter for the annihilation of Israel.
Back home and catching up on the Light, we noticed harsh criticism of Israel in letters to the editor and in one article. Don’t your contributors know that Hamas doesn’t allow Gazans to join them in the tunnels during Israeli bombing raids, which save their lives and could have saved the lives of most of those who died? Do they know that Hamas stockpiled food for themselves but not their people? Are they unaware that Hamas spent billions of foreign aid intended for civilian infrastructure to build a huge military? Are they not concerned that Hamas embedded its military within civilian life, knowing this puts civilians at risk? Not one writer was sufficiently disturbed by Hamas’s weaponization of rape and sexual mutilation to even mention it. Letter writers claim Israel overreacted to the Oct. 7 attacks, but none offered alternatives to prevent such attacks and they ignored the fact that Israel alerted Gazans multiple times in Arabic via phone calls, leaflets, podcasts and other means in advance of attacks, thus revealing military strategy and giving an advantage to Hamas. The reality is that Hamas has betrayed her people for decades and your writers either don’t know that or don’t care. Such one-sided criticism of Israel is biased and chilling. We think it is antisemitic.
The Light also published Israel-sensitive letters but there were notable differences between them and pro-Palestinian letters. None of the Israel-positive letters call for destruction of the Palestinian people. Some call for a Palestinian state and others criticize Israel’s prime minister. On the other hand, none of the Palestinian-positive letters call for Hamas to recognize Israel. None urge Hamas to remove from its charter the calls to kill all Jews in Israel and eliminate Israel. None criticized Hamas’s leadership. Printing Israel-sensitive letters does not offset one-sided, unbalanced critique of Israel.
We are alarmed that letter writers are troubled that 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in Israel in 1948 but are silent about the 1,000,000 Jews displaced from their homes in Arab countries in 1948. We believe it is antisemitic to call Israel’s occupation of the West Bank evil without explaining that Israel became an occupying entity in 1967 because Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, a potential death blow to the economy. Arab leaders amassed hundreds of thousands of troops on three Israeli borders and called for Israel’s destruction, Iraq and Saudi Arabia declared their intent to join the effort and Jordan hurled rockets at Jerusalem. This is why Israel defended herself. She pushed Arab troops back from her borders and entered the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan to put distance between her and those who would destroy her. Since then, no Gazan or West Bank leader has called for the recognition of Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state. No letter writer mentioned that Palestinians turned down the U.N. offer of a Palestinian state in 1947, as did Yasser Arafat when the Oslo Accords offered a Palestinian state. Palestinian leaders’ betrayal of their people began long ago. Writers to the Light could better help Palestinians by advocating for a path to new leadership, rather than blaming Israel for their woes.
Everyone is saddened and horrified by the current suffering, but one-sided criticism of Israel won’t solve anything and unrecognized antisemitism only leads more Jews to support the occupation. We need to acknowledge the poison of antisemitism, including when it shows up in letters. We need enduring efforts to eschew hatred, and even-handed, practical solutions to the crises facing Israel, who has a right to exist, and for Palestinians, who have a right to a country. May our neighbors and the local press take on these worthy goals.
Rich Schiller is a podiatrist and homeopath and Judy is a retired registered nurse and physician assistant. They live in Inverness Park.