I am a Russian Jew who came to the US via an Israeli visa and I am appalled at the Israeli attacks on Gaza and defiance of calls for a ceasefire.

I am not a politician or military commander and I care about the people on both sides because I see how I am closely and inextricably linked to both the Palestinians and the Israelis. I am common person with a human story.

I am even further horrified that Israel is bombing Gaza with US made bombs and is sending ground troops into Gaza with US made weapons. Having been to Gaza myself, I’ve seen the decrepit conditions that Israelis made Gazans suffer under for decades. The US government allowed Israel to make Gaza into a huge prison because of geo-political reasons.

My tax dollars are paying for this war. The US gives about $3 billion a year in military aid to Gaza. This is beyond repulsive.

It is not easy for me to say this because I was brought up to revere Israel and not question its actions because my Israeli visa enabled my family and I to escape the rampant anti-Semitism of the former Soviet Union. However, blind admiration serves no purpose, especially when the object of loyalty is killing innocent civilians. I know that we can live together peacefully when we relate to each other as people and not as religious or ethnic symbols. I am a Russian Jew and work for German companies. Not only have I lived in Sarajevo, a predominantly Muslim city, for 15 months, I’ve also traveled to several Muslim and Arab countries with no problems. I just got an Arabic language book deal while in the Arabian Gulf for one of my books. If I can live in peace with people who are supposedly my enemies, then why can’t the rest of us?

Though I am lucky to have never lived during a war, I am no stranger to the brutality of war. I worked on reconstructing post-war Bosnia and saw shell marks, land mines, bombed out villages, towns and buildings on a daily basis and I listened to first hand accounts of ethnic violence. Having seen the destruction that ethnic violence can bring, I can’t be silent about the atrocities in Gaza.

The political machinery of Israel doesn’t care what the international community wants. The Israeli government is bombing civilian targets, UN humanitarian convoys and school with no remorse. The Hamas leader calls for rocket attacks against Israel while he suffers no personal harm as he sits safely in Damascus, Syria. I do not agree with Hamas’ violent tactics of launching rockets from Gaza into Israel. Both the Israelis and Hamas think that they are doing the best for their country, but they aren’t the ones suffering. It’s the common people on the ground on both sides who see the daily carnage.

It’s true that we are all one. When one of us is hurt in one part of the world, it effects someone somewhere else. Much of the Palestinian population fled Palestine in 1948, when Israel was formed, and after the Arab-Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973. If the Palestinians hadn’t been forced off their land, the state of Israel would have had no place to build its new country and settlements. If the state of Israel didn’t exist, my migration and that of thousands of other Soviet Jews who fled the Soviet Union to Israel or to other countries via Israeli visas would not have occurred. I live happily in freedom in the US because Palestinians were forced off their land. It pains me to say this, but it’s true. The Palestinians were born in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

I can’t change history. I can’t reverse how the state of Israel was formed and how Palestinians were scattered all over the Middle East. Many of them still remain stateless as they have no passports. Some Palestinians turned into a versions of wandering Jews as they have had to move from country to country seeking refuge. Palestinian refugees are now suffering what Jews have had to endure for many centuries. Why?

The Palestinians are not guilty for the wrongs inflicted on Jewish populations in Europe that had to flee because of pogroms or the Holocaust, but the Palestinians are paying the price for the crimes committed by the Nazis and other anti-Semitic governments. We are repeating the horrors of our own history. The Israeli government is fueled by fear and sadness for the massacre of European Jews at the hands of Hitler. But the Palestinians want exactly what Jews wanted for centuries: a home.

When I realized this ten years ago, I went on my own to Gaza and the West Bank to visit the refugee camps to see the reality of Palestinian life in the occupied territories. Gaza is the most densely populated place on the planet and the worst depiction of hell I have ever seen. Families, consisting of seven to ten people, lived in one room apartments covered with an asbestos roof held down by rocks. Children played soccer in a narrow dirt alley between their makeshift refugee camp buildings. After Israel seized the Gaza Strip from Egypt in 1967, the Israelis collected taxes but did not spend the money to develop a livable infrastructure. When the Palestinian Authority took control of the Gaza Strip in 1993, they began constructing roads and buildings. Now, with the Israeli bombing, that infrastructure is probably mostly destroyed.

The population in the refugee camps rose dramatically due to the fact that without educational or employment opportunities as in developed countries, the Palestinian refugees had no incentive to limit family size. Because many young Palestinian men were jailed, women had more children to replace those being imprisoned. Nationalism in the form of outnumbering the Israelis became a political motivation to have large families.

Gazans were suffering so that Israel could exist and help people like me.

I have been to quite a few third world countries before and even worked in post-war Bosnia, but Gaza is definitely the most god-forsaken place I have ever seen. The Gazans are trapped. They can’t go into Israel and they can’t go into Egypt. They are refugees in their own land!

For years in religious school in California, we collected tzedakah, donations to help Israeli schools and children. We never talked about the Palestinian kids in Gaza and the West Bank, nor how they were suffering. What about those “plant a tree is Israel in the name of your ancestor” campaigns every year that were advertised in the Jewish newspapers? Israel needs trees but so do these poor kids in Gaza who are playing in the dirt in between these horrid makeshift living structures.

I was brainwashed into believing that anything Israel did was for the good of the Jewish people. That’s plain wrong. Israel is using the Holocaust as an excuse to fight the Palestinians. They are not the ones who killed us in Europe! We need to stop letting Israel get away with murder. When Israel defies international calls for ceasefires and treats the Palestinians like dirt that Jews worldwide become targets for retaliation and hatred. Just because I am a Jew doesn’t mean I support Israel’s military actions. Many times, I have to explain this to people when traveling abroad. During my recent trip to the Persian Gulf for a book fair, I was afraid to tell people I was Jewish and had to hide my identity. Israel does not make me feel safe.

Just because I condemn Israel’s manipulation of the Holocaust doesn’t mean I condone Hamas or other Palestinian leaders or think that all Palestinians are angels. No way. Yassir Arafat was a crook who stole Palestinian Authority money to fund a lavish lifestyle in Europe. Other Arab countries pay lip service to the Palestinians but do little to actually help those living in the occupied territories or in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon or Jordan.

It’s time to put politics aside and create a peaceful solution for the Israelis and Palestinians.

I want to the US to broker an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations between Hamas and Israel. I don’t want my taxpayer money going to this war. I don’t want to see my ethnic/religious identity being exploited to fuel aggression. Some people may call me a self-hating Jew. I am not self-hating, I am ashamed and want an end to the violence.

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