On the subject of the Israeli-Hamas war, many Jews in Anchorage feel betrayed and are experiencing hurt and anger. Jews have supported progressive causes for decades, and we feel that the progressive movement has turned against us.
We hear support for Hamas, although Hamas has a stated mission of killing Israeli Jews and taking all of Israel. We hear “from the river to the sea” and “by any means necessary.” Take out a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. “From the river to the sea” is a cry to expel or murder all Israelis, whether Jews or not, and make all of that land Palestinian. “By any means necessary” means just that — condoning the murder of Jews to take back the land.
In the protests, we heard that all Zionists should die. Zionism is the political movement of an indigenous people seeking their rights to their original homeland. Jews have been in what is now the land of Israel for over 3,000 years. Most Jews in the U.S. support having a Jewish country. Amid a world of Muslim, Christian and Buddhist countries, there is one Jewish country. The progressive movement seems to be denying the Jews a homeland while supporting one for the Palestinians.
The people supporting Palestinians, and wanting to divest from Israel, are supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization that Iran has built. The organization that they support disdains rights for women, LGTBQ+ people and anyone not of their specific sect of Islam.
Congregation Beth Sholom has been involved in many progressive community activities: supporting LGBTQ+ rights, acting as the location for the annual Christmas gift/food donation center, and sponsoring Mitzvah Mall for nonprofits with a plethora of missions. These are all causes that help the progressive movement. But the progressive movement is wholeheartedly supporting the Palestinian cause with no thought to exactly how it started, and what is happening. There appears to be no thought to Jews who inhabit Israel, and those of us who live here.
It is a complicated issue, and the response should be more nuanced than we are seeing from the progressives with whom we have aligned ourselves in the past.
— Penny Goodstein
Anchorage
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