THERE'S NOTHING MORE ANTI-SEMITIC THAN HOLDING ISRAEL TO LOWER MORAL STANDARDS:

The internal reasons for the escalation are less relevant in the face of the ongoing reality of violent subjugation of Palestinians that will continue to devolve into bloodshed as long as it is maintained. What matters is that the Israeli regime, which carries out this subjugation, bears overall responsibility for the escalation and can choose to end it, but so far has refused to negotiate a ceasefire.

There are no "two sides" to this truth, and choosing to stand against Israel's oppression and aggression is not morally complicated. With that in mind, I'm writing this for you if you are already convinced or suspect that, but something is stopping you from opposing Israel anyway.

The thing that's giving you pause may be your love and care for what you see as the Israeli people. By that I mean us Jews who are citizens of Israel, setting aside Palestinian citizens of Israel and others who don't fall into this category. You may have Israeli friends and family members sitting in bomb shelters, or even loved ones who were hurt by a missile or by street violence. You may just feel a special connection to Israelis because you were brought up to love us as your siblings. Love and care are never a bad thing. I'm happy that you care about us. But this should not stop you from opposing the State of Israel. On the contrary: our suffering should make you more angry at the regime, not more forgiving.

Israeli pain has long been exploited by the regime and its supporters to justify violence toward Palestinians. It's a cynical tactic. It focuses on our wounds not in order to heal them, but in order to perpetuate endless violence that will only lead to more wounds -- mostly Palestinian wounds, but very much Israeli wounds too.

Exploitation of pain is not merely a hasbara tactic, it is at the very heart of Israeli identity. It starts with our collective historical traumas, from the pogroms to the Farhud and most especially the Holocaust, which are used to justify our supposed need for an ethno-state. It continues with the loss of our soldiers, whom we mourn yearly right before Independence Day. Their "sacrifice" justifies our highly militarized culture -- the myth of "the people's army" -- in which everybody serves and the lines between civilian and soldier become evermore blurry. Our collective traumatization from missile attacks, suicide bombings, and desperate knife attacks is used to convince us that building more walls is the only way to keep us safe.

Suffering is used in Israel as a social glue. We are presumed to be united in loss and grief. Israeli suffering is not homogenous, however. Israel's internal racial hierarchy, which places Ashkenazi Jews on top and Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jews at the bottom (right above Palestinians), ensures the unequal distribution of pain. The brutal neoliberal policies of recent decades further perpetuate inequality and suffering. The Israeli people are plagued not only with constant warfare but with a high cost of living, low wages, and a persistent deterioration of the social safety net. Almost a third of Israeli children live in poverty while a small elite grows richer by the day. In the name of standing united against external enemies, Zionism has created a deeply divided society.

The Israeli regime is not something external that happens to us Israelis, however. We are not its helpless pawns, but rather its willing upholders. While we should by no means minimize the Israeli people's responsibility for the regime's violence against Palestinians, we must also recognize how this violence harms us, too, and just how destructive it is. Recognizing the ways in which the calamitous logic of the Israeli regime also turns inward is a crucial step towards being able to move forward from our association with this oppressive regime, and ultimately, toward dissolving it and building something better.

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