BRATTLEBORO-I am deeply disturbed by this letter by a group of local Jews who call themselves The Shalom Alliance.
"We know that many people in our community are passionate about political issues, including those related to Israel and Palestine," they write. "The local Jewish community asks that, especially in this moment, we all take extra care to express political views without unintentionally fueling antisemitism or being insensitive to Jewish neighbors."
As a confirmed non-believer, born to very non-believing, Jewish parents, what bothers me about the letter is symptomatic of what has always bothered me about the religion of my ancestors: its sense of "chose-ness" and self-involvement, focusing primarily, if not exclusively on "our community, our destiny, our travails," etc.
It's obviously been an extremely successful survival strategy, but - more often than not, it seems - there's been precious little room or acknowledgment in it for the feelings and pain of the "goyim," the other.
The most obvious and egregious current example is, of course, the tsunami of bombing, starvation, expansionism, and relentless violence that's been inflicted on the indigenous, non-Jewish population in what's left of Palestine by the Israeli war machine, with the active or tacit approval of its American supporters - people like, I think it's probably fair to say, members of this Shalom Alliance.
And yet they have the nerve to proselytize and counsel readers, the rest of us, to "take extra care" not to be "insensitive to Jewish neighbors." An attitude which strikes me as high-handed and privileged, bordering on solipsism. Where, I ask you, is their vaunted sensitivity when it comes murder, mass displacement, starvation - you name it - of non-Jews?
As a fellow participant pointed out to me when we both attended May 15 Nakba commemoration vigil in Pliny Park, "While American Jews on campuses may claim to feel unsafe, those who speak out for the Palestinians are unsafe." They're the ones who are being abducted, imprisoned, and deported.
And please don't forget the three Palestinian college students who were attacked a couple of years ago by a crazed gunman in Burlington, where one was paralyzed by a bullet in his spine and will never walk again.
In light of these horrors - and, of course, the mass, deliberate starvation and relentless bombing of an entire population, without any apparent remorse - I personally find it terribly ironic that members of the Shalom Alliance are urging the rest of us to "take extra care" that we not be insensitive or offend them.
Richard Evers
Brattleboro
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