I covered the genocide in Bosnia for the Post, wrote a book about it, and reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries. My ancestors were also major financiers of Jewish immigration to British Palestine.The Warburg and Schiff families donated millions of dollars to the cause, and during the war Negotiations between Jews and Arabs that began in 1948 helped raise huge sums of money for the new state of Israel. When Golda Meir made an emergency visit to the United States for her fundraising efforts, one of the philanthropists she met was my uncle, who headed the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
My family’s history of philanthropy overlaps with my familiarity with war crimes, as Israeli forces invade the Gaza Strip in what the International Court of Justice has defined as a “plausible” case of genocide. I am reminded of the same atrocities in Bosnia, when Israel bombed and shot civilians, blocked food aid, attacked hospitals, and cut off water supplies. When the people in the flour lines in Gaza were attacked, I thought of the Sarajevans who were killed while lining up for bread, and the perpetrators who claimed that in each case the victims were massacred on their own side. I remembered someone.
Cruelty tends to rhyme.
Reporting from besieged Sarajevo, I was staying in a front-line hotel where Serbian snipers were routinely firing on civilians walking below the windows. There were times when I was shot as I was walking in and out of the Holiday Inn. On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack of a sniper’s bullet and whistle, followed by a horrifying scream. I went to the window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in the Post more than 30 years ago, I described this man’s desperate cries as “the insane cries of someone thrown off a cliff.” It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind. ”
Not too long ago, as I watched the harrowing video from Gaza, I was thinking about Haris Batanovic – whom I followed the next day to a nearby hospital. The video shows her grandmother, Hala Kreis, trying to leave an area besieged by Israeli forces. As she walks gingerly, she holds the hand of her 5-year-old grandson, who is holding a white flag. Suddenly, a gunshot rang out and she fell to the ground, dead. Her sniper rifle has a high-powered scope that allows shooters to see who they are shooting. The attacks on Kreis in 2024 and Batanovic in 1993 occurred in daylight and were not random.
Millions of Jews living in America feel connected to the creation of Israel. Perhaps our ancestors donated or collected money, went and fought, or donated it to Zionist organizations. What should Jews do now? Everyone makes their own choices, but my experience with war crimes taught me that being Jewish means standing up to any country that commits war crimes.
I wrote in my book on Bosnia that being Jewish and witnessing the actual genocide made me understand its precariousness more than before. The need to give voice to the existence of minorities and the emergence of atrocities. That obligation is further strengthened if your government abets a crime or your tribe commits a crime.
Israel and its supporters insist that what is happening in Gaza is a legitimate and just response to the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters. It is clear that war crimes were committed by Hamas. On the kibbutz, Israelis were shot in their homes and concertgoers at the Nova Music Festival were massacred. We have seen photos and videos, and while some of the allegations turned out to be false, the evidence of a brutal crime is solid. Hamas still holds more than 100 hostages.
It does not give Israel permission to react as it pleases. An eye for an eye, or an eye for a hundred eyes, is not defined in international law. An important tenet of the law of war is that attacks that endanger civilians must be military necessary and that the civilian casualties incurred must be proportionate to the military gain. What this means, in plainer terms, is that you cannot massacre large numbers of civilians for small gains on the battlefield, and you cannot slaughter large numbers of civilians for the sake of small gains on the battlefield, as seems to have happened with the killings of Hala Khurais and many other Palestinians. It certainly means that they cannot target civilians as they would do otherwise. More than 30,000 people have been reported killed in Gaza, most of them civilians, including more than 13,000 children.
The victims of genocide, in which Jews also participated in the Holocaust, are not given the right to commit genocide. Of course, a war crimes tribunal should decide whether Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, but the legal definition of genocide is “an act committed with the intent to destroy the whole or in its entirety.” Therefore, there appears to be sufficient evidence for prosecution. In part, it is a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. ” The keyword is “part”. Holocaust-level killings need not meet legal standards.
This puts all Americans, not just Jewish Americans, at risk. The U.S. government has become Israel’s main backer, as it continues to supply bombs and other weapons to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government. We are all involved.
The idea of Jews defending the rights of Palestinians is not as new as you might think. Before the Holocaust, my ancestors were part of the “non-Zionist” movement, which supported Jewish emigration to Palestine but opposed the creation of a Jewish state. The non-Zionist position was based on concerns that a Jewish state would provoke violence and reinforce accusations that Jews were not loyal to America.
For example, the May 21, 1917 issue of the New York Times had the following headline: Schiff is not in favor of Zionism: he would establish a Jewish population in Palestine, not a state. ” This story is about my great-grandfather, Jacob Schiff, a Gilded Age financier who funded efforts to help persecuted Jews flee Europe.of The idealistic, non-Zionist goal was for Jews settled in Palestine to reach an agreement with the Arabs already living there that would give neither side complete control of the government. Twenty years later, in 1936, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who married Schiff’s daughter, accurately warned that the establishment of a Jewish state would lead to “bloodshed and misery.”
Of course, Jewish settlement continued in Palestine, and the Holocaust accelerated the momentum for establishing a national homeland in Palestine. My ancestors dutifully opened their wallets for that purpose. But there is a largely forgotten history of what happened in the dissident corners of the American Jewish community at the time. As Jeffrey Levin writes in his related new book, Our Palestine Problem, since the founding of Israel, there has been “deep concern about Israeli policies toward both Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli control.” There were American Jews who felt that way.” problem.
These dissenting Jews were particularly upset by the exodus of more than 700,000 Arabs when Israel was founded. It is what Arabs call the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Israel refused to allow these Arabs to return to their homelands and for decades established a repressive apparatus of military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Levin’s book, published just before the uproar, notes that “Today, some American Jews consider support for Palestinian rights to be a meaningful expression of their Jewish identity.” ‘ he pointed out.
My Jewish identity has always been a little vague. Because my ancestors were German Jews who assimilated at the speed of cultural sound. When I was a kid, there was also a Christmas tree. (They donated and spent money at the same rate. By the time I was an adult, my wealth was almost gone.) Covering the Bosnian Muslim genocide made me feel more Jewish. I also feel that Levin is right in pointing out that defending the Palestinian people is increasingly becoming an act of Jewish identity, especially for young Jews.
Near Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s home in Brooklyn, I recently witnessed a long-neglected movement finding new momentum. I live a 10-minute walk from the Democratic Majority Leader’s apartment, where the New York City Police Department barricades himself whenever a protest approaches. Schumer, who is currently advocating for early elections that could unseat Netanyahu as prime minister, supports military aid to Israel and is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US. It is in. The protesters have taken shelter a few hundred meters away in Prospect Park, and there happened to be about 100 of them there when I passed by last month.
Some waved colorful placards with professionally printed slogans such as “Hands off Rafah – stop the genocide” and “Cease fire now – let Gaza live.” But there was also a woman with a kaffiyeh tied around her waist and a cardboard box with a handwritten message: “Jewish nurse, against occupation.” She was protesting not only the killing of civilians, but also the fundamental issue: the decades-long military occupation of Palestinian territory.
These protesters are part of a movement that includes Jewish demonstrators wearing T-shirts that read “Not in Our Name.” Their powerful voices undermine arguments such as: All protests against Israeli violence are anti-Semitic. They help legitimize the global opposition to what is taking place in Gaza, protecting not only Palestinian lives but also Jewish lives. Because they contradict the false idea that the Jewish people as a whole are responsible for what Israel is doing.
After graduating from university, I did not choose to become an activist. I chose journalism and then the war chose me. Over the years, I realized that exposing war crimes wherever they occur is central to my identity as an American, a journalist, and a Jew.
