Rabbi Rami Shapiro's Statement on the Israel-Hamas War

[I was asked by my friends at Spirituality+Health Magazine to share my thoughts on the horrors unfolding in Israel and Gaza (and, by the time you read this, perhaps, elsewhere in the Middle East as well). I’m not an expert in any of this. I write as a human, a Jew, a father, and a grandfather. I write from my pain and my anger. I hope you hear some wisdom in this as well.]

I watched a video of an Israeli mother clutching her baby to her chest as she ran for shelter while Hamas bombed her neighborhood in Ashkelon. I watched a video of a Palestinian mother clutching her baby to her chest as she ran for shelter while the IDF bombed her neighborhood in Gaza. If not for the labels on the screen telling me who was who, I could not tell these women and their babies apart.

There are those who insist that because I’m a Jew, I must choose to care for the first rather than the second. There are those who insist that because they are Palestinian, or because they count themselves (but not Jews!) among the marginalized, they must choose to care for the second rather than the first. This is a false and wicked choice rooted in what Albert Einstein called a delusion of consciousness that creates a zero-sum world of “us” against “them,” perpetuated by ideologies and religions that sanctify martyrs and celebrate murderers, that divide people into chosen and not chosen, saved and damned, believers and infidels, high caste and low, and that promote the oppression and even genocide of whoever is deemed “other.”

As a Jew I stand in solidarity with my people; I share their suffering and grief, and their rage at Hamas, a terror organization whose self-stated mission is the destruction of the State of Israel and the extermination of Jews. As a human, I also stand in solidarity with innocent Palestinians; I share their suffering and grief, and their rage over the injustices inflicted upon them by Israel, Iran, and so many Arab countries who exploit their suffering rather than end it.

But none of this excuses Hamas slaughtering innocents, beheading babies, and kidnapping civilians. None of this mitigates Hamas using innocent Gazans as human shields, and none of this should blind Palestinians to what Hamas is doing to their sons: stripping them of their souls and reducing them to homicidal monsters. You don’t have to love Israel to hate Hamas; you only have to love your own children.

Just because I want justice for Palestinians doesn’t mean I must justify the evil committed in their name. On the contrary! Because I want justice for Palestinians, I must denounce such evil and those who perpetrate it, and I expect you to do the same.

If you want to choose a side, side with the mothers clutching their babies and running for shelter. If you want to choose a worldview, choose the nonzero world of “all of us together.” Any other choice perpetuates the trauma and brutality we call human civilization.