As a Palestinian, this is what I wish the Jewish community could hear
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Sid Shniad
Oct 13, 2025, 12:33:52 PM (6 days ago) Oct 13
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The Globe and Mail (BC Edition) October 10, 2025
As a Palestinian, this is what I wish the Jewish community could hear
RAJA KHOURI
(Canadian who was born in Lebanon to Palestinian Nakba survivors, and the co-author, with Jeffrey Wilkinson, of The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other)
It can be hard for a non-Jew to understand the Jewish attachment to Israel; for a Palestinian, it is near-impossible. Seeing the Israeli flag hanging in every synagogue I visited always baffled me. I wondered: Why is this community raising a flag of a country most did not originally come from? Why do so many Jewish organizations defend Israel, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong?
Frankly, Israel is reviled by many in my community, as is Zionism – not because we deny the Jewish right to self-determination, but rather because redemption for Jews has meant dispossession for us. My people have been paying for the historical antisemitic sins of Europe ever since the Second World War.
The massacre committed by Hamas two years ago sadly was not the first to occur during the struggle between our peoples. We had massacred each other many times before, and almost daily since. From the time when Britain’s Lord Balfour made his empire’s infamous commitment to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in 1917, we have struggled to share the land.
I’ve been told by my Jewish friends that a Jewish-majority state is essential for the safety of Jews anywhere in the world. Every time responsibility for Jewish safety is placed in someone else’s hands, they say, it hasn’t gone well – and sadly, history supports this belief. But at what cost to Palestinians does Jewish safety have to come? And are Jews truly safe, when Palestinians are not? More than a century of struggle tells us it cannot be so.
I know the mass killing of Israeli Jews on Oct. 7 had a deep emotional impact on the Jewish community, understandably reawakening traumas of the Holocaust. But the atrocities taking place in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s extremist government are, for my people, nothing short of another Nakba. To us, the trauma of the Nakba has never stopped, with continuing land theft, settlement expansion and the oppression of the occupation.
It pains me that many Jewish organizations have been largely silent about the genocidal acts being done in Gaza in the name of Jews. While many in the Jewish community declare their support for a two state solution, it pained me that many mainstream Jewish organizations stood against Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state. These are many of the same organizations that blame Hamas for everything that is wrong, when they should know that our struggle started long before there was a Hamas, that extreme oppression and settler violence is present in the West Bank where Hamas is not in power – and our struggle will continue, despite the recent peace deal put forward by Donald Trump, until Palestinians have freedom.
It also pains me when some in the Jewish community choose to disbelieve the famine conditions in Gaza, or the mass destruction of lives and livelihoods, or every image of dead babies and maimed children. It’s a lot easier to deny matters than face up to realities – but at what cost to one’s soul?
As Sharon Brous, a Los Angeles rabbi, said in a recent Rosh Hashanah sermon: “A Jew does not respond to photos of starving children or stories of people being shot at aid sites by challenging the credibility of the source. … A Jew cries out in agony. This is the spiritual catastrophe.” Amen to that.
How do we square what Israel is doing in Gaza with tenets of Judaism I have come to appreciate from deep conversations I’ve had with Jewish friends: the sanctity of all human life, and of the spirit of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world?
I know no community is a monolith, and Gaza has caused many divisions among Jews. I have found community with those who are speaking out for the humanity of all people. I have found community with the Friends of Standing Together, a group of people united by values of social justice, despite our ethnicities or religious affiliations, calling for peace, equality and self determination for both peoples.
I know that Jewish fears are real, as is the age-old threat of antisemitism that persists. I am aware that those who hate Jews for who they are continue to thrive. We Palestinians are also not a monolith – and as a whole, we are not among them. Our problem is political – over land and identity that Zionism took away from us. Do not conflate our struggle with Zionism with hatred toward Jews; our animosity is reserved for those who oppress us.
Do not listen to those who demonize. Let us listen to our common humanity.
At what cost to Palestinians does Jewish safety have to come? And are Jews truly safe, when Palestinians are not?
As a Palestinian, this is what I wish the Jewish community could hear
RAJA KHOURI
(Canadian who was born in Lebanon to Palestinian Nakba survivors, and the co-author, with Jeffrey Wilkinson, of The Wall Between: What Jews and Palestinians Don’t Want to Know About Each Other)
It can be hard for a non-Jew to understand the Jewish attachment to Israel; for a Palestinian, it is near-impossible. Seeing the Israeli flag hanging in every synagogue I visited always baffled me. I wondered: Why is this community raising a flag of a country most did not originally come from? Why do so many Jewish organizations defend Israel, regardless of whether it’s right or wrong?
Frankly, Israel is reviled by many in my community, as is Zionism – not because we deny the Jewish right to self-determination, but rather because redemption for Jews has meant dispossession for us. My people have been paying for the historical antisemitic sins of Europe ever since the Second World War.
The massacre committed by Hamas two years ago sadly was not the first to occur during the struggle between our peoples. We had massacred each other many times before, and almost daily since. From the time when Britain’s Lord Balfour made his empire’s infamous commitment to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” in 1917, we have struggled to share the land.
I’ve been told by my Jewish friends that a Jewish-majority state is essential for the safety of Jews anywhere in the world. Every time responsibility for Jewish safety is placed in someone else’s hands, they say, it hasn’t gone well – and sadly, history supports this belief. But at what cost to Palestinians does Jewish safety have to come? And are Jews truly safe, when Palestinians are not? More than a century of struggle tells us it cannot be so.
I know the mass killing of Israeli Jews on Oct. 7 had a deep emotional impact on the Jewish community, understandably reawakening traumas of the Holocaust. But the atrocities taking place in Gaza at the hands of Israel’s extremist government are, for my people, nothing short of another Nakba. To us, the trauma of the Nakba has never stopped, with continuing land theft, settlement expansion and the oppression of the occupation.
It pains me that many Jewish organizations have been largely silent about the genocidal acts being done in Gaza in the name of Jews. While many in the Jewish community declare their support for a two state solution, it pained me that many mainstream Jewish organizations stood against Canada’s recognition of a Palestinian state. These are many of the same organizations that blame Hamas for everything that is wrong, when they should know that our struggle started long before there was a Hamas, that extreme oppression and settler violence is present in the West Bank where Hamas is not in power – and our struggle will continue, despite the recent peace deal put forward by Donald Trump, until Palestinians have freedom.
It also pains me when some in the Jewish community choose to disbelieve the famine conditions in Gaza, or the mass destruction of lives and livelihoods, or every image of dead babies and maimed children. It’s a lot easier to deny matters than face up to realities – but at what cost to one’s soul?
As Sharon Brous, a Los Angeles rabbi, said in a recent Rosh Hashanah sermon: “A Jew does not respond to photos of starving children or stories of people being shot at aid sites by challenging the credibility of the source. … A Jew cries out in agony. This is the spiritual catastrophe.” Amen to that.
How do we square what Israel is doing in Gaza with tenets of Judaism I have come to appreciate from deep conversations I’ve had with Jewish friends: the sanctity of all human life, and of the spirit of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world?
I know no community is a monolith, and Gaza has caused many divisions among Jews. I have found community with those who are speaking out for the humanity of all people. I have found community with the Friends of Standing Together, a group of people united by values of social justice, despite our ethnicities or religious affiliations, calling for peace, equality and self determination for both peoples.
I know that Jewish fears are real, as is the age-old threat of antisemitism that persists. I am aware that those who hate Jews for who they are continue to thrive. We Palestinians are also not a monolith – and as a whole, we are not among them. Our problem is political – over land and identity that Zionism took away from us. Do not conflate our struggle with Zionism with hatred toward Jews; our animosity is reserved for those who oppress us.
Do not listen to those who demonize. Let us listen to our common humanity.
At what cost to Palestinians does Jewish safety have to come? And are Jews truly safe, when Palestinians are not?
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