Dissenting Jewish Voices Americans Should Hear
The American media refuses to cover these voices
This will be the fourth piece I’ve written on the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict. The previous three will be posted at the bottom.
In two of those pieces, I included information from Brian Shilhavy of Vaccine Impact specifically about some of the most censored information.
In my piece headlined “Chaos Reigns as the People are Ruled by Emotion,” the most censored information exposed is that average Israelis and Palestinians can and do get along. Shilhavy wrote:
“My belief, which is based on years of living in the United States, my home country where I grew up, as well as the years I lived in the Middle East (Turkey and Saudi Arabia), is that the featured image of this article comes much closer to communicating the truth of average, ordinary people, who live in Israel and the Palestinian areas. And that truth is that the vast majority of people living in these areas, if given a choice, would gladly dwell together in peace.”
In my piece headlined “Christians Killed in Israel-Hamas Conflict,” the most censored information exposed is that there is a large Christian population in Gaza. Shilhavy, on the hospital that was hit last week, wrote:
“This horrible incident shows an important truth about the population in Gaza that is seldom reported in the U.S. media, that Muslims are not the only residents in Gaza, but that there is a strong Christian presence there as well.”
In this piece, I want to share another oft-censored piece of information in the American media, and that is that not all Jewish people support Israel and its corrupt government. Shilhavy wrote:
“So, this is a truth that is mostly censored: Not all Jews are Zionists!”
I want to share some of those voices here. I simply think Americans, who often don’t know what is going on in the Middle East but act as if they know everything, should hear these voices. Agree, disagree with them, doesn’t matter. You should hear what they have to say, especially if you clamor for American involvement in the affairs of foreign countries.
In that final piece from Shilhavy, he included two videos of Holocaust survivor Dr. Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-born Jew. One of the videos included has already been removed from YouTube, that being Maté’s thoughts on the current conflict. The second video, an interview with his son Aaron, is from 2019.
In it, Maté described having visited the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1990s. He used to be for the Zionist government of Israel. After seeing how that government treated the Palestinians, he’s not any more.
Maté said:
“So, I visited Palestine, the Occupied Territories in the West Bank and Gaza, in the second or third year of the First Intifada with a medical delegation organized by a Jewish woman from California. And our interest was just to see medical services and the challenges they faced under the occupation. But, you know, to see the…even then, and it’s much worse now, but even then, this is early 90s, I think, to visit the Occupied Territories was to witness horror. The humiliation that the Palestinians had to undergo daily, you had to see it to believe it. The oppression, the fear, the heavy presence and hand of the Israeli military, the destruction of the Arab homes, the deprivation of water rights, and just the sheer humanity of it. I cried for two weeks. I cried every day, and personally I was, inappropriately, but feeling guilty that I’d ever been a Zionist. And I used to be a Zionist. And I thought…but, of course, in retrospect was my Zionism made every sense in the world, because coming out of antisemitic Eastern Europe, Zionism, when I was a teenager, gave me a totally different interpretation of history, in a sense of valuation and validation, and yes, we can fight back, and yes, we can assert ourselves in the face of all that horror and all that hatred. So, for me that was an act of self-affirmation to become a Zionist. But there I am in Palestine and I’m seeing what that cost the Palestinians. Now I’m full of grief and, so, particularly the interview that you heard was Israel army, Israeli border or border troops had massacred some Palestinians in the village, and I was talking about that on Canadian radio. This is when I was there, and I saw the aftermath.”
Maté went on to describe going through many periods of disillusionments, but noted that’s a good thing because those seeking truth will have to face that reality in their lives. He said:
“But, personally, what I want to say is that I’ve been through a series of disillusionments, and you think that’s a bad thing, but it’s a good thing. Because would you rather be illusioned or disillusioned? Would you rather have illusions about the world, or would you rather see the way things are? So, to get disillusioned, it’s actually a good thing. The problem for a lot of people in this world, Jews included, is they…that they identify with something, and when that something then comes under scrutiny they feel personally attacked. Now, to identify with something comes from the Latin word “idem,” which means “the same,” and “facere,” to “make.” So, when you identify, you make yourself the same as something else. So, if I identify with Israel as the Jewish state, then when Israel is criticized, I’m criticized personally. Or if I identify with the United States as a state, or Canada, or, you know, in the province of Alberta these days. Alberta is in economic trouble, it’s got this oil sands, everybody in the world knows that oil sands are horrible for the climate and for the environment. So, but the Albertan government now talks about “anti-Alberta-ism,” on the part of those people that criticize their energy policies which are very much in favor of the oil companies and the oil sands. So that when you identify with something, whether for economic or emotional or political or any combination of reasons, and you make yourself the same as that, then when that’s criticized, you’re gonna feel criticized. And so, what I’m saying to people is, don’t afraid to be disillusioned, don’t afraid….
Don’t be afraid to be disillusioned. It’s better to be disillusioned than to be illusioned, and don’t be afraid to be disidentified, you know, don’t identify with something outside of yourself to the extent that you become uncritical and blind.”
Then there’s Gerald Kaufman who was a Jewish British MP. He died in 2017, but before then he became a strong opponent of Zionism after once being an ardent Zionist, like Maté. He, too, had visited Gaza and saw the same abysmal treatment of the Palestinians. He went as far as comparing the Zionist government’s action against Gaza in 2009’s “Operation Cast Lead” to Nazis in Poland.
In 2010, Kaufman gave a speech in which he described traveling the West Bank in 1982 and again leading the first parliamentary delegation to Palestinian territories in the 2000s
Regarding his 1982 trip, Kaufman said:
“I looked at the way the Palestinians were living, in poverty and unemployment, compared to the affluence of the illegal Jewish settlements next to which they lived.”
Regarding the parliamentary delegation, Kaufman said:
“The sheer ignorance of these Israeli troops when they held our parliamentary delegation twice at gunpoint showed that these are not simply soldiers, they’re thugs….
The Israelis have built a wall, an illegal wall. And the result of that is that the Israelis cower behind the wall. They don’t dare go beyond it unless they’re the settlers protected with armaments of which the Palestinians are deprived….
You only have to be there, not see what’s shown on television but experience on the ground what a hell this is for the Israelis and what a hell this is for the Palestinians, 500 roadblocks so the Palestinians cannot move around. If they had jobs, they couldn’t go to work. If they had university places, they couldn’t go to university. If they had school places for their children, they couldn’t go to them. If they were sick and needed to go to hospital, they couldn’t go there….
When we passed entrances, bad roads into the Palestinian towns and villages, what did we see that the Israelis had done? They dug trenches and piled up the trenches with human, physical waste as a way of deterring the Palestinians from moving. And my parliamentary delegation saw it, and my parliamentary delegation smelled it as well.”
Kaufman went on to say that the only way to make peace is to speak with your enemies. He said:
“Of course, Hamas are a deeply unpleasant organization, and of course they have fired rockets over Israel…. But for every Israeli killed by Palestinian rockets, 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops often… deliberately firing at women and children and killing them.”
There are many Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, who oppose Zionism like Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss who says:
“The fact on the ground is that Judaism is subservience to God. Zionism is a transformation to a base national. It is totally contradictory, it is antithetical to our Judaism. The fact is… Judaism does not accept Zionism, it cannot accept Zionism. In every aspect of the Zionism, it’s contradictory and it’s based on blasphemy.”
Many Israelis are calling for peace:
Many Israelis understand that what happened on Oct. 7 is the fault of the Zionist government, whether through sheer incompetence or by design. Read my piece headlined “Israeli-Gaza Conflict: We’ve Got to Question the Narrative” for the reasons why.
Recently, two members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party were driven out of a hospital by doctors and family members of patients who were going to the hospital for P.R. purposes. The Israelis shouted, “You’ve ruined this country! Get out of here!,” “How are you not ashamed to start another war?” and “Can’t you see what’s happening to us?”
And that takes some courage to stand up like that to the Israeli government as often times Israelis are brutalized by their government for questioning it.
Currently, there are reports that at least 100 Israelis have been arrested for social media posts that offer even just the mildest of support for civilians in Gaza like, “There is no victor but God.”
“At least 100 Israelis have been arrested for social media posts supporting Palestinians in Gaza and 70 remain in detention, according to a legal advocacy group in the country. Adalah, which represents Arab Israelis in human rights cases, said the arrests are part of an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of expression in Israel.
Police arrested Dalal Abu Amneh, a prominent Palestinian-Israeli singer, for ‘incitement’ after her social media team posted a Palestinian flag with the caption: ‘There is no victor but God,’ her lawyer told The New Arab.
Mansour said that others were arrested for posts that consisted of Koran verses, prayers for the people of Gaza and political analysis of Israeli military operations. He said that so far nobody had been charged by prosecutors, but that police had held many of them in detention for several days.”
Meanwhile, here in America we have Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League which constantly engages in defamation, literally saying that “every Jewish person is a Zionist” one day then saying anti-Zionists Jews are a “hate group” the next. And this leftist defamer is now being heralded by some so-called “conservatives.”
My previous three pieces:
