An Open Letter to My Colleague

By Connie Twerski

As a Jew, as a fellow advocate, and as a friend, I felt your silence during this horrific time to be a personal attack.

It’s difficult to describe the world of pain and fear that my family and my people are experiencing now, a terror that has existed for as long as we have.

My great-grandfather and four of my great-uncles were killed in the Holocaust, and the family that survived lived the Holocaust throughout their lives.

My mom was born in hiding, in the cellar of someone’s home. She spent her first years in a refugee camp waiting for her father to come home from a labor camp. Thankfully, he did, and they were able to secure passage on a ship to America. To this day, she won’t set foot on a ship, as it takes her back to the weeks she spent being violently seasick as her family and hundreds of other refugees fled from Italy to America with nothing but what was left of their families.

Jews live generational trauma; we are the race targeted for extinction time and again. We have been chased out of countries whose industries and economies we helped build. We have been blamed and scapegoated, attacked, shamed, had our homes and belongings stolen or destroyed; we were forced into ghettos, mutilated, gassed, beheaded, had cities wiped out with pogroms, mass attacks, and now even livestreamed for the world to see. And yet we are the somehow the oppressors.

There are demonstrations filled with people who claim to care for Palestinians but know nothing about the oppression they have endured under Hamas rule. They know nothing about Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians, Palestinian prisoners, and Arabs that live freely in the only country in the Middle East that allows them to live a life of their choosing.

I would be happy to share knowledge, resources, facts, data from Israeli Arabs, reporters in Gaza, the son of a leading Hamas militant, recordings of calls from Gazan civilians seeking IDF help during the last few weeks, as they were blocked by Hamas from leaving target areas because Hamas wanted to accumulate their own civilian casualties. Left-wing and right-wing sources, pro-two-state-solution journalists, and historical resources, so that you can gain some understanding of the background and current situation in that region, if you were so inclined.

I don’t know if you have ever been to Israel or to Gaza, but I find that some of the people who have been protesting the loudest don’t have the faintest idea of where to find Israel on a map, what the history of Israel and her neighbors are, who the Palestinian people are, which nations support them, and so on.
You are a staunch advocate for the civil rights movement. Not a day goes by in which you haven’t stood for, discussed, mentioned, debated or dismantled some thought, topic or situation with regard to the oppression of a race. It is very personal to you and it shows in your staunch advocacy.

I have heard you speak about your disgust regarding the lack of adequate education in the U.S. around the history of slavery, of black oppression.

I found that ironic. I learned about the Civil War, its many battles and stories, and the fight against slavery, Frederick Douglass and his escape from slavery, the Jim Crow laws, about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, Booker T. Washington, about Ida Wells and Rosa Parks, about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, to name just a few.

We didn’t learn about the pogroms, Kristallnacht, the expulsion of Jews from a number of countries throughout history, and their arrival in the Americas. We learned about World War II, about the Allies and the Axis, and about Hitler, but we didn’t learn about the Holocaust, what or where the concentration camps were, or America’s silence until Pearl Harbor.

We didn’t learn about the segregation of Jews in the U.S. We didn’t learn about the stores, schools, clubs, workplaces and theaters where Jews weren’t welcome. We didn’t learn about antisemitism. We learned about civil rights. And it mattered.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s attorney and personal advisor, Clarence Jones, shared that Dr. King has tasked him with the responsibility to “ensure that society never forgot the Jewish community’s contribution during the civil rights movement.”

After George Floyd’s murder, the world erupted. Millions of people marched for George Floyd and others like him who had been victims of brutality at the hands of police officers.

I don’t remember seeing demonstrations for our men in blue, police officers. So many of them risk and have risked their lives day after day to protect us.

We didn’t see those demonstrations because there was universal recognition that while many, if not most, of our police officers protect and uphold the law, there is a systemic issue of racism and brutality that needed to be addressed. The world recognized the need to stand up and speak out against this injustice.
There isn’t even any moral equivalence that can be drawn here after the atrocities that took place on October 7.

And yet, the single bloodiest day against Jews since the Holocaust was met either with deafening silence or pro-Palestinian protests (which began even before Israel had buried their dead, before they could even gain access to the communities that had been attacked, to save the few remaining Jews and begin to identify the bodies).

The protests on college campuses included chants for genocide of the Jewish people and threats to Jewish students on campuses.

Imagine KKK student groups on campus calling for the extermination of black people. Imagine that those groups were supported by professors and deans of these institutions and they defended the KKK student groups’ right to express their desire to see all black people gone.

A jihadist leader called for October 13 to be a day of terror against Jews throughout the world.
Rallies throughout the world could be heard chanting, “From the river to the sea” (by definition, calling for destruction of the Jewish state and her people. Amazon even had a T-shirt), and, “Kill the Jews.”

Swastikas were painted on Jewish homes throughout the country, people were assaulted, and my son was threatened as he walked down the street last Saturday afternoon.

Yet so many people were silent.

Major media outlets, “progressive” outlets, fed the antisemitic, frenzied masses. They misreported when Hamas made claims of Israel targeting a hospital (no need to fact-check a terrorist’s claim) and dialed up the world’s hatred. They later retracted their story, but no one cared, as it didn’t fit their narrative.

Those same major media outlets continued to use terms like “alleged” attacks on Jewish civilians, even as Hamas themselves livestreamed it to showcase their accomplishments. The media that needed more proof as they watched footage of the celebration in the streets of Gaza, welcoming Hamas and the beaten and bloodied hostages.

Then there are the calls for a ceasefire when there are 239 hostages, including babies, Holocaust survivors, families and people with disabilities being held in underground terror tunnels.

Where is the world’s moral compass? Are we not as worthy as George Floyd?

Are those beheaded babies not worthy of a protest?

No, they are Jewish babies.

Are the bodies of autistic children or people with Alzheimer’s not worthy of our demands for recognition, for care?

No, they are Jews with disabilities.

Are the bodies of children tied together and burned alive not in need of our protection?

No, they are Jewish children.

Instead, people posted “I am on the side of peace” to pacify the hypocrisy of an activist that stared back at them from the mirror.

How many people were “on the side of peace” on 9/12/2001? No one.

Because peace can’t exist when one side has unequivocally stated that the war can’t end until all Jews are dead.

Yet the Jew still stands alone.

It isn’t enough to be quiet. My friend Susan once said that if you are silent, you are complicit.
Indeed, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
That time is here.

#NeverAgainIsNow

This massacre has changed our lives forever. I wake up from nightmares. I keep seeing the faces of the children, the parents, families, the communities, and a nation mourning.

I watch the tapestry of a people so entwined and connected tighten and unite as they grow more wary of the world, the silent or the anti-Jew world around her.

While the heinous acts of Hamas are gut-wrenching and inexplicably life-altering, the fear that lives in my gut constantly is far more insidious, and grows with each passing day.

I realize that no matter how much I am part of an inclusive and diverse society, I don’t belong.

I am a Jew, and I must make excuses for my existence at every turn. I now understand how the Holocaust could have happened in a civilized, intelligent culture. I don’t want to understand, but I do.

I go through my friends and contact lists and wonder whether you would hide me. I worry that I can’t even protect my children from my “friends.” The threat to me and my loved ones is much closer to home.
If you believe in human rights, if you won’t tolerate racism or hatred, if you believe in equality, then where is your voice now?

“We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Dr. King.

Your silence is deafening.