Israel

The Gaza Question

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

I posted this piece on the paid part of The Blazak Report, my Substack, on May 24th. In wake of yesterday’s horrific attack in Boulder, Colorado, I thought it should be available to a wider audience.

May 24, 2025

Remember that song about the Vietnam War being the “big muddy”? (For you young ones, I’m referring to Pete Seeger’s 1967 “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”) Gaza feels the same way. The endless war where the locals are the casualties. It’s also the “big muddy” for the left. Since October 7, 2023, I’ve learned not to talk about Gaza, because if I do I will surely inflame somebody on my team. For example, does the word “Zionist” mean “a person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel” or a fascist who wants the genocide of Palestinians?

Even the basic facts are volatile. The October 7 Hamas attack killed 815 civilians, including 36 children, with another 251 Israelis taken hostage. The details are horrific. The worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. But there are those who then argue that the attack was the penultimate response from Hamas after years of deadly violence against innocent civilians by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank. Since IDF’s response to the attack, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported over 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 17,000 children (as reported by Al Jazeera). And there are those who would argue that this is the cost of finally defeating Hamas and securing Israel’s safety.

Because I think it’s a bad idea to kill children in Ukraine or Yemen or Gaza, I attended some of the early protests to the attacks on Gaza. The local Palestinian/Arab/Muslim population were understandably outraged. Hospitals were being bombed. A year later Benjamin Netanyahu would be declared a war criminal by the International Criminal Court. But much of the protest was not about the Prime Minister of Israel, but Israel itself. When the chant turned to, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” I did some rudimentary geography in my head and figured out this was about more than stopping the bombing.

And I totally understand the need and the aching for a free Palestine. I also understand the need and the aching for a secure Israel. I have good friends and colleagues in both camps. What’s a human rights activist to do?

I was given some solace when I saw how many Jews, as well as Jews in Israel, were protesting Netanyahu’s war on civilians. I was also heartened to see Arabs and Muslims decry the October 7 attack. But then something weird happened.

The Trump administration started labeling the Gaza protestors as “antisemitic.” At the protests, I heard a lot of anger at Israel but I never once heard anything about “The Jews.” I have been studying anti-Semitism for a long time, including interviewing German neo-Nazis, so I think I have a pretty good handle on defining the term. Antisemitism sees a Jewish “race” as evil (some antisemites claim the Jews are the product of a union between Eve and Satan), and part of a global cabal to control banks, media, governments, and the world. There has been none of this in evidence at these protests. Trump’s Orwellian rewrite seemed more like performative “friend of Israel” strategizing.

It doesn’t mean that Jews haven’t felt unsafe or targeted by these protests. The murder of two Jewish employees of the Israeli embassy in DC this week, by a pro-Palestinian activist, certainly adds to that fear. However, antisemitism was on the rise before October 7 and has been a constant blight in American culture. But it is reasonable to believe that anger at Israel has morphed into anger at Jews as a group. It’s a rough time to be Jewish. Or Arab.

The pointless murder of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky this week reminded me of the pointless murder of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume last year, killed by his landlord in Chicago because the landlord was angry about the October 7 attack. These names should be said together; Sarah Milgrim, Yaron Lischinsky, and Wadea Al-Fayoume, casualties of hate.

I have no solution to this conflict. It’s easy to say, “two state solution.” It’s easy to be angry at the rockets of Hezbollah and the Jewish settlers who drive Palestinians from their homes. I only have anger and the ability to alienate colleagues on both sides by not taking a side.

But I need to make two key points here.

I want to the right to stand in the discomfort of not taking a side while validating the hurt and anger that is felt on both sides. I believe in a free Palestine and a secure Israel. I believe that war is terrorism. And unlike Donald Trump, who one minute declares Qatar backers of Hamas, and the next minute is licking Qatari asses, I know this unwillingness to take a side is problematic. And I’m sorry to both causes.

The second thing is that I know in our struggle against the rise of authoritarianism in America we need all hands on deck. That means pro-Israel Americans and pro-Palestine Americans are going to have to lock arms. There’s going to be a lot of strange bedfellows in this fight. Wait until I tell you my plans for Reagan Republicans.

I don’t want to be afraid to talk about Israel/Gaza anymore. I want to acknowledge that it is hard and that I have faith in the people who are building bridges between the two people (and that included the two people who were murdered this week.) The violence must end. Shalom. Salam. Peace.

Supporting the Right of Palestinians Not to Be Murdered is Not Anti-Semitic, And We Must Confront the Rise in Anti-Semitism

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

April 27, 2024

Free the Israeli hostages. Hamas is a terrorists organization. Israel has a right to exist. Also, no Jewish college student should be made to feel unsafe because they are Jewish, including at my alma mater, Emory University. I wanted to get that out of the way before someone on Fox News accuses me of anti-Semitism. As someone who has dedicated his entire adult life to studying and combatting neo-Nazism, I think I have a pretty good feel for what anti-Semitism is and there is an alarming lot of it, but the de facto defending of the right of Palestinians to live is not anti-Semitism. But I’m not Jewish, so I might be missing things that don’t look anti-Semitic but feel anti-Semitic.

I’m writing this on the fifth anniversary of the Poway synagogue shooting. On April 27, 2019, a 19-year-old white supremacist walked into the Chabad of Poway synagogue in San Diego and opened fire, with an AR-15 rifle, on the last day of Passover. He killed one woman and injured three others, including the rabbi. Before the shooting, he posted a manifesto on 8chan that claimed Jews “meticulously planned genocide of the European race.” Because he was inspired by the Christchurch mosque shootings that had resulted in 51 deaths in New Zealand a month earlier, the killer had attempted to burn down a mosque in Escondido before his deadly shooting spree in Poway.

Last week, I sat in on an ADL webinar that shared that anti-Semitic incidents in 2023 increased 140 percent over those reported in 2022, spiking after the Hamas attack in Israel. If I’ve learned one thing in the 30+ years I’ve done this work, it’s that racists and neo-Nazis are opportunists. When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 767 civilians (including 36 children), they saw a massive opportunity. So how do I speak about the over 38,000 Palestinian civilians (including nearly 16,000 children) killed by Israel in their war on Hamas without being pulled into the black hole of anti-Semitism?

It’s sickeningly clear that the far right is coming at this issue from both sides. On one side, it has injected anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories into a part of the pro-Palestinian movement. (We can debate how big or small that part is.) They’ve also utilized the claim of “anti-Semitism” to shut down sincere protests to defend the human rights of Palestinians, that can include the accusation that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza (which was alleged by the United Nations last month).

I feel the need to point out four basic assertions:

Thing 1: A firm critique of the policies of the government of Israel is not anti-Semitism. Being critical of the misogynistic policies of the Taliban in Afghanistan does not make one Islamophobic. There are countless Jews, both inside and outside of Israel, who oppose the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and reject the actions of Bibi Netanyahu. Are those Jews anti-Semitic?

Thing 2: The core tenant of anti-Semitism is that Jewish people, as a group, have some secret control of the world (banks, the media, government, hip hop, etc.) that shapes global events. It is completely possible to see Israel’s military campaign as an action of a sovereign nation and not an operation of a “global cabal” of “evil Jews.”

Thing 3: The heartbreaking spike in anti-Semitic incidents and crimes has been paralleled by an equally heartbreaking spike in anti-Muslim incidents and crimes, including the murder of Wadea al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Palestinian boy in Illinois who was stabbed 26 times by his landlord who had been listening to conservative radio following the October 7 attack.

Thing 4: The vast majority of the deaths caused by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been civilians, including women and children, who are not members of Hamas, and have not resulted in the liberation of Israeli hostages. Additionally, the created famine and destruction of schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in Gaza has not resulted in the freeing of Israeli hostages.

Having said all that, we cannot deny anti-Semitism has been witnessed in pro-Palestine protests in two ways.

First is the idea that a free Palestine requires the elimination of the state of Israel. There are many, including myself and President Biden, who believe a “two state solution” is the most rational way out of this mess. But those who chant, “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free!” do not see Israel existing in that vision. (Although, I’m willing to bet a lot of the college students chanting that have no idea were the Jordan River is. Americans are pretty stupid when it comes to geography.) You know who also wants the destruction of Israel? Hamas and neo-Nazis.

The second issue is how Jews in general (including Jewish Americans) are scapegoated for policies of the government of Israel. While there are significant numbers of American Jews who are in the streets and college quads protesting for the human rights of Palestinians, that any Jewish person be made to feel unsafe or targeted for the policies of government over 6000 miles away is the definition of irrational. But Jews have long have been the target of irrational scapegoating, including by one well known anti-Semite, Adolf Hitler.

I remember what it feels like to be young and righteous. When I was an undergraduate at Emory, our issue was apartheid in South Africa. Like the students there now, we set up a shantytown on the quad and called for the university to divest from the country. Emory was built on Coca-Cola money and Coke had plenty of operations in South Africa. (In 1986, Coca-Cola pulled out of South Africa. You’re welcome.) Is the movement to divest from Israeli “apartheid” the same situation? As an undergrad in 2024, I might see the similarities. I also might get caught up in the chants and rallies the blur the lines between anti-Netanyahu-ism and anti-Zionism. But utilizing police to crush the protests doesn’t help protestors (including well-meaning college students) to better understand the complexities of this issue. I’ll tell you this, when the cops came for us in the 1980s, it further radicalized my position as I dug my heels in for the long fight. These protests seem the perfect opportunity to widen the conversation, centering both Jewish and Palestinian voices. (Note: Not all Gaza residents are Muslim. There is a small Christian population there. And probably a few Goths.) Police crackdowns silence the discussion.

This could be a lengthy tome about the need to find a “middle ground” in this crisis. That talk does not serve the children of Gaza, who face the same certainty of death from Israeli rockets that the children of Ukraine face from Russian rockets. Those kids don’t know about Hamas or Israel’s tortured history in a hostile landscape. That call for compromise would also not soothe the families of the 133 Israeli hostages still being held in some God-forsaken hellhole. That is not the intent.

The intent is highlight how the very powerful charge of anti-Semitism has been weaponized to shut down calls for a cease fire, calls to stop the slaughter, calls to choose policies that don’t result in human carnage. Some Americans are afraid to oppose the war out of fear of being labeled anti-Jewish. As I said when this thing started last fall, it is possible to be both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel. The deep emotional nature of this conflict obscures what should be ethical clarity. I will leave it to the psychoanalysts to determine if Jewish trauma is now being levied on Palestine. I will leave it to the philosophers to determine if genocide is a defense against genocide. (And if “genocide” is even an accurate term.) I just want to hold space where we are allowed to express our outrage and sadness for what we continue to do to each other. Stop the killing.

2023: Now and Then – The Year in Review

~ Randy Blazak ~ Leave a comment

December 31, 2023

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2023 was the year I bought new recordings by the Beatles and the Stones, changed my opinion about Barbie, Taylor Swift, and Bud Light (support!), but also Robert Kennedy, Jr. (who should take a long walk on a short pier). It was the year I found out I didn’t have cancer but was surrounded by people who do. It was the year I became obsessed with Joan of Arc, Henry V, and what clues 15th century Europe might offer us about the chaos and collapse that is at our doorstep. The year began with power grid attacks across the country and ended with watching rising seas and rogue waves attacking our coastline. In between, 2023 was the year I took a journey to the center of my mind.

The biggest story of 2023 should have been the growing climate crisis and the hottest summer on record, but we all know it will be worse next year and every year after that for the rest of our and our children’s lives. So instead we focused on doomed Chinese spy balloons above and doomed billionaire submarines below. The countless criminal indictments against Donald Trump seemed to only embolden his crusade to become an American dictator, while mass shootings, and continued wars in Ukraine and the Middle East became background noise to life as we approached the quarter century mark.

There was certainly plenty of good news this year. The COVID pandemic that killed so many people was finally declared over. Gas prices started dropping and a whole bunch of labor strikes made things better for workers, including my daughter’s teachers, who were on strike for over three weeks. (And it looks like Cozy’s dad will be on strike in February.) The Barbie movie had everyone at least talking about patriarchy and that’s a good thing. The news story that hit hardest was the death of singer Sinead O’Conner in July. Sinead and I had a brief romance in the eighties and the pang of not being a better friend when she was in pain had me reflecting on all the missed opportunities to be a more present partner over the course of my life.

I think when we look back on 2023, we’ll see it as the year when Artificial Intelligence became an issue that we have to reckon with. The U.S. Senate held hearings as AI threatened to eliminate jobs and deep fakes rendered truth passé. I had my first final exam essay answers lifted from ChatGBT and wondered if traditional academia was a thing of the past as student brains become replaced with AI bots. The AI worst-case scenarios could make The Terminator look like The Teletubbies. I don’t know what I will be writing at the end of 2024 but there’s a good chance I won’t be the one writing it.

Personally, the year was a period of intense growth. Mindfulness and meditation helped me to learn to monitor my internal states and make better decisions. I thought the growth would help me repair my marriage but my wife had other plans, so it’s up to me to keep on this path. I occasionally tried my hand at dating and had a mad fling with a movie producer and even, however briefly, had a girlfriend. Most of my energy went into teaching and the federal grant I have been working on, charged with reducing political violence. Portland, as it turns out, might not be a great dating city but it’s the perfect place to tackle radical extremism.

While 2022 was framed by my trip to Ukraine to offer assistance in that horrific battle against Russia, 2023 was framed by my trip to Georgia to help my brother with his horrific battle against cancer. Bringing him back to Oregon, where our more “socialized” health care coverage offered him a fighting chance, was quite an ordeal. And he’s still fighting, out of hospice care and back into chemotherapy. The cancer “caretaker” work became a primary role for me but offered me a chance to build the relationship with my brother I didn’t have when we were younger. He can be a pain in the neck sometimes (Who wouldn’t be in this situation?), but I am happy to see him enter the new year with the rest of us.

I suppose I am 365 days wiser. I tried to share little bits of that insight here in this blog. My post about Sinéad O’Conner was the most popular, as we all sat in shock over her sudden death. I was honored to post several articles related to the Cure-PDX project I’m working on. They are partially intended to prepare us for 2024 and the danger that is sure to come as Trump and his minions plot to reclaim power by any means necessary. Hopefully, both the personal and the political musings have offered something to think about this year. We’re all trying to figure this out together. 

Here are my posts for 2023:

Can Cat Videos Prevent Power Grid Attacks? (January 8, 2023)

“Colorblind” White People and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech (January 16, 2023)

Washington State Considers a Commission on Domestic Terrorism (January 24, 2023)

Being Blasé About Gun Violence (and a possible solution) (February 4, 2023)

A Final Valentine (February 14, 2023)

I Was Jimmy Carter’s Most Annoying Student (February 19, 2023)

F. U. Suicide (and the value of atheism) (March 11, 2023)

Calm the F Down: Mindfulness as a Survival Strategy (March 20, 2023)

How to Be Less White (April 6, 2023)

The Lynching of Transgender Americans (or What’s Wrong with Kid Rock’s Brain?) (April 24, 2023)

Curiosity Saved the Cat, or How I Stopped Fighting and Started Asking Questions (May 21, 2023)

Music, Nostalgia, and the Power of Being Present (May 29, 2023)

The Day I Found Out I Didn’t Have Cancer (June 8, 2023)

DWM: Dating While Married (June 30, 2023)

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Little Brother (July 7, 2023)

From Big Brother to Cancer Care Giver (July 23, 2023)

The Soul Crushing Death of Sinéad O’Connor, Who I Should Have Helped (July 26, 2023)

Why Are Conservative Boys So Triggered By Barbie? (August 6, 2023)

Conversations About Death: Confronting End of Life Decisions (August 23, 2023)

Jacksonville is America and America is Sick: Can We Cure White Supremacist Violence? (August 29, 2023)

Not Woke:  Mauritania, where slavery exists and gay people get the death penalty (September 7, 2023)

My Lizard Brain Made Me Do It: Why We Do Stupid Things (September 12, 2023)

Danger, Will Robinson! Anticipating a Next Wave of Political Violence (October 3, 2023)

I Don’t Know How to Talk about the War in Israel (October 13, 2023)

Wrapping My Head (and Fingers) Around Our Gun Culture (November 6, 2023)

It’s Not Black and White: Addressing the Binary on the Left Side (November 20, 2023)

Funnels to Extremism: Do the Left and Right Have Parallel Tracks? (December 9, 2023)

Dad’s Top Discs of 2023 (December 19, 2023)

DWM2: Reflections on a Summer Romance (December 26, 2023)

With God on Our Side – Conversations with People Who Speak for God (December 27, 2023)

2023: Now and Then – The Year in Review (December 31, 2023)

With God on Our Side – Conversations with People Who Speak for God

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

“And you never ask questions, when God’s on your side.” – Bob Dylan

December 27, 2023

The current bloody conflict in the Holy Land, also known as Israel and Palestine, has me reflecting on the challenges of breaking through religious dogmatism to find anything that looks like common ground. I’m sure there are currently Jews and Muslims alike who feel God is on their side of the conflict. I’m mindful of the 1431 trail of Joan of Arc in which the English were desperate to prove the teenaged “Maiden of Orleans” was a heretic and not carrying out God’s mission to drive the English from France in the Hundred Years War.

When I was working on my dissertation research on white supremacists, I spent a lot of time with members of the Ku Klux Klan and members of a religious sect called Christian Identity. They were all quite sure the Christian Bible mandated their racism. In fact, the doctrine of Christian Identity states that a white God created white Adam and Eve in his image and the Jewish race are the descendants of Cain and the Serpent (Satan) and are inherently evil. And what about non-white and non-Jewish people? Oh, they are all the offspring of the soulless beasts of Eden. “It’s right here in Genesis!” They would tell me, quoting chapter and verse.

When I would bring up the concept of liberation theology and how Martin Luther King, Jr. found a very different message in their sacred texts, they would tell me that all that was “the devil’s work.”

We are in a similar moment where chapter and verse are quoted around the world to legitimize political positions, whether it’s opposition to LGBTQ rights or in support of Hindu nationalism. While many, and I hope most, people of faith are open to conversations about how their faith frames their political views while honoring that there are alternative faith-based interpretations, there is a significant phalanx in all religious traditions who are quite convinced that they have the one true interpretation of scripture. To those of us on the outside, that dogmatism seems pathological.

While toxic dogmatism can come in all ideological and theological disguises, it can be particularly tricky for us folks on the outside to have productive conversations with those who don’t share our foundational beliefs. When we don’t agree on foundational premises, like in the authority of scripture, or if we use vastly different interpretive lenses to make sense of the same passage, common ground can seem impossible to find.

So how do you talk to someone who has God on their side?

In most settings this might be a situation where a person backs away slowly, so as to not get stuck in the tarpit of religious debate. There’s a great spot in London called Speaker’s Corner where people have those debates/shouting matches as a form of entertainment. The rest of us have more productive things to do, like doom scroll through our social media feeds. However, some of that dogmatism becomes violence very quickly. And we don’t have to go back to Joan of Arc and the Hundred Year’s War to see it. Just turn on CNN.

This project I’ve been working on for the past two years, called Cure-PDX, is charged with reducing political violence and some of that violence has a religious element. For example, there is an evangelical church in the region that has preached that God does not punish violence against gays and lesbians. There is a church right down the street from them that preaches a more inclusive message from the same Bible, and they have experienced vandalism from the anti-gay church. Here is an opportunity for us to bring in the de-escalation work before somebody gets hurt.

One of things that makes our team so well positioned to do the work is that we represent a wide variety of political and social positions; we are liberal and conservative, Buddhist, Christian, and wandering agnostic. We have pastors on our team that help facilitate outreach to various faith based communities and I thought I’d rely on their lived experience and vital insight into this matter. Here’s the question:

Americans often rely on their faith traditions to inform their political opinions. However, there are those who are so wedded to a narrow interpretation of their sacred texts that it often leads to the vilification of those who don’t follow the same interpretation, as well as others, who may all fall under some label of “infidels,” and may become targets for violence. For example, we’ve seen a spike in religiously motivated hate crimes across the country, as well as attacks targeting the transgender community. Given this dynamic, is there a way to talk to the more dogmatic members of faith communities that encourages them to accept more nuanced interpretations of text that allows them to take a step back from more hostile rhetoric?

I asked this question to Pastor Jeff Hoover, who founded and pastored a church in Longview, Washington for 31 years, when he got a new “assignment.” Today, he leads an organization called CitiServe of Cowlitz County, where he walks with pastors and leaders, encouraging, equipping, and uniting the church in the local area and is a new member of our Cure-PDX team.

“I feel the key to having a conversation with someone you may disagree with is curiosity. Instead of going into a potentially difficult conversation wanting to prove or discover who is right or wrong, go in with authentic curiosity about just how the other person arrived at their particular viewpoint. It is astounding just how much we can learn from and about each other if we would simply be open to see things through someone else’s eyes.”

Pastor Jeff hit on a key tool that has been so useful in this project, the power of curiosity; the power of asking instead of telling. Between people’s strongly held beliefs and their relationship with the world is a whole backstory worth investigating. Spending time getting to know a person will likely create more openings in that dogmatic wall than going at it with a sledgehammer of counter arguments. 

Sociologists use the term “religiosity,” to describe how committed people are towards their faith traditions. Some completely define themselves by their beliefs and practices, bordering on fanaticism. Others have no engagement with any religious beliefs or practices. Most folks are comfortably somewhere between those two poles. (You will find me at mass most Christmas Eves, on my knees praying for peace, and the other 364 days of the year offering lectures on the problems of religions rooted in Bronze Age thinking.) But, unless there is a mental health issue involved, even people on the “fanatical” end of the religiosity spectrum have a very human story about how they arrived at their conclusions.

We are looking for ways to interrupt violence. Much of this work has to do with finding ways to identify common values with people who may be escalating towards violence. I’m guessing matters of faith provide a perfect place to find those values.

Note: Thank you to team member Ryan Nakade for some of the framing in this piece.

It’s Not Black and White: Addressing the Binary on the Left Side

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

November 20, 2023

It was three years before I found a bumpersticker that I liked enough to put on my first car. I was 19 and in Washington DC, lobbying for the nuclear freeze movement. It was 1983, and I was starting my work as a peace activist. There was a table in a DC church, with various progressive swag, and I bought a baby blue bumper sticker that read, “PEOPLE NOT PROFITS.” It seemed a summation of our struggle in Reagan’s war machine eighties.

People, not profits. Forty years later, I think, why not both? People AND profits!

When I was young, I lived in a world of black and white, good versus evil. It was a simple terrain to navigate. “You are either with us or you’re against us.” The us and them mentality had clear dividing lines. The misfits versus the straights. Left versus right. The oppressed versus the oppressors. Then I grew up and realized it is all shades of grey, context, and nuance. Nothing is black and white. And Ronald Reagan did a few (a few) good things.

I love how my fellow travelers on the left have worked at smashing binaries with regard to gender. Men and women are not “opposite sexes.” Gender is fluid in definition and performance. And so is sexuality. As Kurt Cobain sang, “Everyone is gay.” Well, at least a little bit. And more and more people define themselves as belonging to more than one racial category, including my daughter. We are a nation of “mulattos” and it’s beautiful. Smash the binary. Reality is intersectional!

I was at a pro-Palestine rally at Portland’s city hall this weekend where hundreds of people had gathered to call for a cease fire in Gaza. The young organizers were leading the crowd in boisterous chants, some calling for peace, but other refrains included, “2, 4, 6, 8, Israel is a terrorist state,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” I get it. I imagine that if you are a parent in Gaza right now and your child has just been killed by an Israeli bomb, you are probably not blaming Hamas. I get it. And I get that Israel is probably facing an existential crisis in this moment, as these chants grow louder and louder around the globe. “Was this the best response to the slaughter on October 7?”

I thought about the death on both sides and the hostages who may still be alive somewhere in Gaza.  I thought about how I was being pushed back into a binary. Israel versus Palestine, which side are you on, boy? I want to blur the binary, and say I’m for Israel AND Palestine. Obviously, there are people who want to eliminate Israel and/or Palestine from the face of the earth. But there are lots of people who don’t, including Israelis who have had family members killed by Hamas rockets and Palestinians who have had family members killed by Israeli rockets. I stand with them. Defend Israel. Defend Gaza.

I went through this three years ago when I was showing up for the Black Lives Matters protests in downtown Portland. Graffiti started popping up around the city that read, ACAB. “All Cops are Bastards.” I groaned, because I knew this reductionist thinking was appealing to the teenage brain, but A. It doesn’t help foster real systemic change, and B. It’s not true. Some cops are bastards and I’ve been lecturing about them for 30 years and trying to find real ways to keep them off the streets. But I know lots of police officers who are doing their work because they are dedicated to the same social justice values that I am. Maybe the left needs better slogans, or just a push to get out of its teenage brain.

Barack Obama’s political rise was based on the simple idea that America is not divided up into red and blue states. We all live in various shades of purple. We have been told we’re divided and we’ve swallowed the sales pitch fully. There are millions of Americans who are dreading the holidays, when they will be stuck at the dinner table with family members who have “opposite” views. We’re constantly being lectured about how polarized we are. All this divisiveness does not make America great. It turns the nation into a schoolyard screaming match. No member of the MAGA brigade ever turned in their red hat because some progressive called them an idiot. (And whatever the “vice versa” of that would be.)

This project I’ve been working on for the past year, Cure-PDX, is looking for ways to break through the us versus them binary that all too often spirals into political violence. We can recognize that our teenage brains want to “fight evil.” But what if there was no evil? What if it was all just ancient systems of oppression that we all get sucked into either reinforcing or resisting? A gay man suffers from the weight of a heterosexist society but also enjoys the privileges of patriarchy. Is he the good guy or the bad guy?

When the Israel-Hamas war exploded, I saw people get pulled in either direction, just like I witnessed with the “Black Lives Matter/Blue Lives Matter” narratives that must have made every black cop’s life nuts in 2020. Then, as now, I want to embrace what is valid about both sides. There is a line that for one side to exist, the other must be destroyed. We have the capacity to reject that simplistic world view. The goal of the powerful is to divide us, conservatives versus liberals, black lives versus cop lives, Israelis verses Palestinians. That’s how the status quo is maintained.

As we head into this fractious election cycle, where some are screaming for civil war, I’m going to look for the humanity in the other side. Instead of dropping verbal bombs (or real ones), I’m going to ask questions and find where our values align. I’m going to work for peace. And I know there will be those that say this position somehow empowers the “bad guys.” I anticipate the name calling, the accusations of betrayal. But maybe, just maybe, the frightening truth is that progress comes from building bridges, not dropping bombs.

Side Note: I’m still writing an imaginary musical, called Northwest Side Story, where an Antifa girl and a Proud Boy fall in love. Maybe instead of the tragic Romeo and Juliet ending, I’ll have them move to a kibbutz on the River Jordan.

I Don’t Know How to Talk about the War in Israel

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

October 13, 2023

I’m at a complete loss. Tomorrow, it will have been one week since Hamas’ barbaric invasion of Israel that left so many people, especially those beautiful young people at a music festival, dead or kidnapped. Since then, those images and the images of Gaza, the most densely populated place on earth, being bombed into dust have kept me in a constant state of nausea.

I’m at a complete loss on how to talk about Israel and Palestine, in general. I have so many friends on both sides of the issue. Being an undergraduate at Emory (a Methodist university) was a crash course on the Jewish diaspora and how important Israel is to the stability of the Jewish people in the wake of the Holocaust. I read Leon Uris’ 1958 novel, Exodus, like it was first-person history. I’ve also met so many Palestinians, including students of mine, who describe the apartheid they now live in since the state of Israel was created in 1948. They both present the need for their states with such complete legitimacy, it seems insane to even think one side has the most airtight claim on the land.

Since the 1990s, we’ve been able to put our faith in the “two state solution,” that the Gaza Strip in the south and the West Bank in the north will be the nation of Palestine. As a teenager, I watched Jimmy Carter broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt, so maybe this would work. The deal, which turned the two territories over to the Palestinian National Authority, allowed me to not think as much about Israel and Palestine. The problem was solved, right? But when the terrorist group Hamas, took over Gaza in 2007 and the Gaza Strip became a walled-off prison of 2 million people, I probably should have paid more attention.

I don’t know if this war, which is now almost a week old, ends the idea of a two-state solution. There are already reports of Jewish settlers and Hezbollah militants clashing in the West Bank and media and politicians seem fixated on the war spilling over into a “wider conflict.” Like on 9/11, it does feel like the Earth forever shifted on its axis on 10/7. I saw the image of a child’s bedroom in Ashkelon, Portland’s sister city in Israel. The blood of that child, similar in age to my child, was spattered across the wall by Hamas raiders. I couldn’t hold back the tears. The next image was an apartment block in Gaza City flatted by Israeli rockets, a child, again like my own, covered in dust was searching for her family in the rubble. And again, I cry.

There is a tidal wave of false information already flooding social media about this conflict. Some of it is misinformation that is just wrong on the facts. But much of it is disinformation, purposely shared misinformation to inflame one side or the other, or malinformation, which is true but is shared to cause harm, like the showing of child casualties to enrage viewers to violence. It’s so hard to know what is real. I have to start out with the assumption that most of what I see on social media (and all of what I see on “X/Twitter”) is false. If people are getting their primary information from TikTok, we have a huge problem.

There is also a weird false narrative at work. People (especially non-Jewish Americans) often conflate “Israel” and “Jews,” making anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism fast friends. The opinions among Jews about the policies of Israel are probably as varied as the opinions among non-Jews about the policies of Israel. But there is a parallel line that conflates “Palestinian” with “Hamas.” One could easily argue that the vast amount of suffering in Gaza is because of Hamas. But then this conflation then equates “Hamas” with “Israel,” and that is madness. Israel, like all nations, has all kinds of problems. As in the United States, Israel has human rights issues to answer for. But, unlike Hamas, Israel is a democratic state that submits itself to the scrutiny of its global neighbors. The recent peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia are evidence of that. Hamas, harbors genocidal fantasies akin to Hitler’s, and has no desire for “peace.”

So much of my work on violent extremism highlights the role of trauma. And yes, there is a story to be told of generations of Palestinian trauma that would produce the type of mind that could have been capable of slaughtering kids at the “Supernova Sukkot Gathering” music festival last Saturday. But one could argue the history of Jewish trauma is much longer and deeper and doesn’t lead Israelis to rape, murder, and torture anyone in the manner we’ve seen this week. Again, I don’t know how to talk about this because it all defies the limitations of words.  I just want to understand how humans are capable of this.

This conversation could go into all kinds of directions. How Putin, neo-Nazis, Iran, arms dealers, and evangelicals who believe Israel will soon be delivered to Christians are the likely beneficiaries of this mess. About how we have already seen a spike in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes in the United States in response to the war. About how dare we enjoy our pumpkin spice latte’s and post-season baseball while hundreds are being held hostage in Gaza. I’m just here to say, as a human being, I don’t know how to talk about this.

As a college professor, I find my young students tend to fall into two categories. The first are emphatic and righteous. They firmly believe that “Israel is a terrorist state” or that “Hamas are subhuman aberrations that must wiped from the face off the earth.” The other, larger group are just completely checked out, endlessly watching reels on their phones. They couldn’t find the “Middle East” on a map, let alone the Gaza Strip. I was trying to engage them in class yesterday and they looked me like, “What does this have to do with me?” I don’t know what’s worse, their indifference or the students who are actively cheering for Hamas.

It’s clear that Hamas wants to escalate the violence and kidnapping Israeli babies is a good way to do it. If rockets and a ground assault from Israel leads to the death of thousands of Palestinians, it furthers their dream of a “holy war” in the region. But I don’t know what the alternative is. A zombie apocalypse (a la World War Z)? An alien invasion? A faster, deadlier version of COVID? I told you I don’t know how to talk about this.

I’m at such a loss for words. The trauma being levied on the children of Israel and the children of Gaza will forever shape their brains. Unlike my emphatic students, I have no idea what the solution is. I can urge for de-escalation, but I also understand the impulse to take up arms and fire rockets. Inaction is off the table but what is the action? We must respond immediately but also wait to better assess the situation.

So I’m here to say I have no answers to this. I’m angry and I’m heartbroken and I know this is so much bigger than me. It seems like the international community, especially Muslim nations in the Middle East, need to defend Israel’s right to exist while fully enfranchising the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t know. And I’m going to have to be OK without knowing. As a citizen of nation founded in violence, I can’t tell others not to use violence to form their nations. I can only bear witness to this moment of fire and pain.