Waiting to Hear from the Maine Jewish Community

(As submitted to the Bangor Daily News)

Every day I look for letters from Maine Jews condemning  Israel's genocidal bombing of trapped,  starving Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.    The Israelis are even  deliberately bombing schools and hospitals.
        
Such filthy, Nazi-like barbarism must surely be repulsive to many in  Maine's Jewish communities, but I search  in vain for a word from them.
        
I am so sickened by what the Israeli government has been doing since  1947 to the Palestinians, who have lived there for thousands of years, that I  can scarcely bear to read or think about what's going on now.  But we must speak out when we know  something is wrong, or we lose our humanity.
        
No more free passes for Israel.  No more "Oh, we Jews suffered so much  during WWII," when we know that Jews were not the only ones to die terrible  deaths in WWII.  This does not  justify ANY killing of neighbors to steal their land, water, and oil.          About 70 million other people, mostly civilians, also died ghastly  deaths in WWII, including many Christians who were sent to the gas chambers  for helping Jews escape.  Jewish  lives are no more important than other people's.  This Jewish martyrdom complex has been  used to justify too many heinous acts.  
        
Israel has caged in the Palestinians, cut off their food and  electricity, smashed down people's houses, killed UN and other aid workers,  built a wall separating farmers from their land, built illegal Jewish  settlements in Palestinian lands, and now is attacking with white phosphorus  (causes terrible burns), fully-armored troops, and USA-built bombs dropped  from USA-supplied fighter jets.  
        
The  USA government gives  Israel USA-taxpayer billions every  year.  I say not one penny more  until they act like a civilized nation and stop killing their neighbors – who  are their close relatives, after all - the Palestinians and other Arabs with  whom they share that region.
        
Israel brags that they run our country,  the USA, especially now that Barack  Obama's right-hand man, Rahm Israel Emanuel, has dual Israeli-USA  citizenship.  Where do his  loyalties lie?
        
If American Jews do not speak out against the slaughter of children in  schools and in their beds, they are complicit with those acts.  The Israeli government purports to act  for world Jewry, so Jews have a special responsibility to condemn atrocities  committed in their name.        
        
And yet we wait for Maine Jews to speak out.
        
While not a Jew, I'm on an email list for Tikkun magazine, edited by  Rabbi Michael Lerner, also a voice for Interfaith Spiritual Progressives, who  has inveighed against this invasion and slaughter.  That website is

http://www.tikkun.org/
        
I urge Maine Jews to read on that website, and the websites (listed on  the Tikkun site) of Jewish peace groups in  Israel.  They're speaking out more openly than  American Jews, who seem afraid to do so.  
        
Read what these Jewish peace people are saying.  Then say what you know to be  true:  that what  Israel is doing to the Palestinians is  wrong, wrong, wrong, and deserves to be condemned.  No more carnage in the name of World  Jewry.    
        
I believe American Jews should either speak out for what they know is  wrong, or go to Israel and help slaughter babies.  Genocide is not an acceptable way of  dealing with a political problem.   Israelis, of all people, should know that.
       
Not one more penny of American money until  Israel stops the carnage, and negotiates  in earnest for a just solution.
        

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Contact Editor