On Oppression

I recently read a book (for one of the many book clubs I'm in) about the Holocaust. 

In my youth, I was extremely into holocaust books and tbh I'm not totally sure why, but I perhaps it's something to do with my proclivity for sad stories in general. I remember reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry in third grade, and I think that's when I really started seeking out additional holocaust books, but maybe it was even earlier than that. Also worth noting that the books I liked as a kid usually still had happy endings...the main character always survives in a children's book; there's always someone who comes in to save the day. While I think the idea behind books like this was to teach children about the horrors of the past, I think my personal infatuation with the subject may be proof that in addition to respect for the survivors of that brutality, it also had the power to instill children with a belief in a false reality where there are good guys around every corner and the persecuted will be rescued in the end. 

As an adult I got kind of burnt out on these type of stories. Maybe that corresponded to when I realized that the reason survivor stories get told is that only the people who survived the atrocities got to pass their tales down to subsequent generations; the vast majority of the victims of the holocaust didn't get that luxury. It kinda loses the heroic appeal when you can fully grasp the reality. And I've found that more recently, I am really sensitive to reading Holocaust stories because they are so often ripe with Zionism and it weighs heavily on my conscience. I gave up on a book recommended to me by a friend a few weeks ago partly because I couldn't stand to hear the main character's father repeatedly push for his children and their families to "settle" in Palestine as an alternative to staying in any European countries where they may soon be in tumult. Part of me was like, "Yeah, okay, fair enough to get the hell out of Europe!" but there was no acknowledgement in the scenes that I read (which was almost half of the book) of the Palestinians whose houses they had moved into, nothing that acknowledged the ongoing struggle of those displaced people. It made me feel weird and I couldn't do it. 

So, back to this book I actually did finish for my book club. I liked it, and it didn't praise Zionism in an icky way either, so that was a big relief. It was actually about the Holocaust in Romania, a fictionalized novel about the author's own grandmother's lived experiences during those years. It turns out the Jewish citizens weren't all sent off to concentration camps there, but were consistently isolated and alienated from society long before the Nazi's made their way there. There was also a significant push/pull from both Germany and Russia invading at different times. A truly fascinating (and simultaneously horrific) look at a place I knew very little about despite my childhood proclivity for Holocaust stories. 

But here's what did make me feel weird about it all: I looked at the author's social media and there was no acknowledgement of the atrocities still going on in Palestine now. She is apparently on a social media hiatus, which is fine, but in the caption of one of her photos from October I found this: 

Tomorrow, my novel, THE BLOOD YEARS, about my grandmother’s teenage years in Holocaust-era Romania, will be published. Today, I learned of a wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor in Israel, kidnapped. In my book, the main character’s grandfather, her Opa, often says, “Everything is cyclical.”

Here is what I know: Murder is always terrible. My heart is broken. I love my grandmother and miss her every day, and I deeply wish I could have met her beloved Opa, Heinrich Fischmann, seen here.

This is a perfectly understandable sentiment (also, how crazy is the timing of her book release with the October attacks?) and I think it's a totally fair reaction; not reacting with additional violence or hatred, just an expression of sadness and acknowledgement of perpetuated hatred that she covers in her historical novel. But it was the complete silence on the violence following that post that got to me. Now, it is not this author's job to publicly reckon with the violence of a whole country. I know that. I don't think she's awful or anything. And I respect that everyone should be taking regular social media hiatuses (I don't think the internet is generally good for our mental health). But at this point in time, an absence of public acknowledgement that Israel is problematic seems to me pretty indicative that a person doesn't have a problem with Israel's continued displacement of Palestinian people.

I realize that this person could have previously posted stories that I missed and have since expired, and could have privately held opinions they kept off their social media as a public figure. I know that. But to be an author publishing a book in 2023 about historical Jewish oppression and not make any permanent public acknowledgement of the ongoing atrocities the nation of Israel is inflicting on another marginalized group seems...myopic at best.

Having this stuck in my head all week has been reminding me of a conversation I witnessed between some coworkers many many years ago. So now, story time! My coworkers were having a conversation bemoaning the fact that Black Lives Matter organizers had a protest at the Mall of America and disrupted holiday shopping. These coworkers, though they weren't there and hadn't been personally affected by this protest, were horrified by the actions of the protesters and infuriated about how it would (in their opinion) unduly affect people trying to buy christmas presents for their kids without causing any real change and how tragic that was. The sentence that has stuck with me for a decade now was "As a Christian in America, I feel oppressed!" I had literally nothing to say about this comment at the time (because I was rendered speechless, but also because I wasn't part of this conversation, just nearby). I also can't recall if there was any explanation or insight to what said oppression was, though if I had to guess, it'd be something along the lines of Christian-owned businesses not being allowed to decide for themselves if they will refuse service to LGBT folks.  Ya know, the ole oppression of not having a legal justification for discrimination- you've heard of that, right? But I realized not that long after overhearing that conversation is that what I should have said was "Not being allowed to oppress other people is NOT the same thing as being oppressed!" I've thought about this many many times in the almost decade since it happened and I stand by that assertion so I'll say it again:

Not being allowed to oppress others is NOT a form of oppression.

Here's how I think this relates to Israel's genocide right now: Israel is oppressing displaced Palestinians and have been doing so for the better part of a century now. They are currently committing a months-long ethnic cleansing that is being pretty well documented in real time for the rest of the world, and a significant amount of the population is still not acknowledging it. I think that's partly because people are afraid of being labelled anti-Semitic. And I understand not wanting to say triggering things about a country populated by a people group who has been so marginalized historically throughout the western world. 

But again, I say: not being allowed to oppress others does not mean you are yourself being oppressed. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of real antisemitism in the world today; I am not at all saying that Jewish folks don't face the reality of discrimination and hate crimes themselves. I know they do. And I know that hatred is perpetuated by the garbage spewed by the kind of creeps who sometimes run for President here in America. But what I am saying is that pretending that what Israel is doing to Palestine isn't racism is morally questionable at best. And calling a spade a spade (or a genocide a genocide) isn't the same thing as oppression (or antisemitism). We can call out and condemn violence and racism from a country, we can decry the continued murder and disenfranchisement of Palestinians, and we can also call out hate speech directed toward Jews because of their race and religion. Being opposed to Israeli occupation of Palestine is not equivalent to hating Jews. 

I think standing up for the marginalized means both calling out Israel AND advocating against antisemitism. I think the actions of Israel as a modern nation are a blight on Judaism; Jews deserve a sense of pride and self-worth untainted by the war crimes of Israel. This, in my opinion, gives Jews in the rest of the world an even bigger incentive to stand with Palestine. I wish "not in our name" was the rallying cry of every single Jew in America. I wish our government could acknowledge that they are choosing to back oppression (then again, when have they ever acknowledged such a thing in the entire history of our country?) and cease financing genocide. I wish nobody considered it controversial to speak out against war.