You can protest the war in Gaza without expressing antisemitism
Israeli protesters in Tel Aviv urge their government on Monday to make a deal with Hamas that would bring home Israeli hostages. Credit: AP/Ariel Schalit
At 10 a.m. Monday, sirens rang out across Israel.
It wasn't an air raid, or rockets from Hamas or Iran. Instead, it was a siren of remembrance, to commemorate Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day.
As the sirens blared, everyone stopped, fell silent, and mourned.
It happens every year in Israel, a moment for people across the country to remember the six million Jews, and millions of others, killed during the Holocaust. But this year, Yom Hashoah struck a different tone, as Israelis and Jews around the world also recalled those killed during Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, and worried about the hostages still held in Gaza, whose fates remain unknown.
As day turned to night, quiet mourning morphed into angry protest. Thousands of Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, waving Israeli flags while calling for the hostages' release, for a cease fire, for an agreement with Hamas.
“It's time to accept the deal. It's time for a cease fire,” the mother of one hostage yelled in Hebrew, standing on top of a car. “Bring them home.”
The anger was palpable, the stakes high, the goals unambiguous. The protests were every bit as passionate as protests against the war in Gaza in this country, but with one significant difference: The obvious absence of the antisemitism seen and heard in protests here.
Here, protests have included abhorrent justifications for the events of Oct. 7, along with calls for intifada, the end of the Jewish state and the elimination of Zionists, Zionism and Jews. Here, the rhetoric, posters and actions, often guided by outsiders' playbooks, have led to a hostile environment for many Jewish students.
Here, even talk of “Never Again” has been exploited.
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I spent much of Yom Hashoah outside, often with just one other fellow Jewish student, reading the names of Holocaust victims for 24 hours. Some would take turns with us, others would ask questions, some would just sit and listen. Now, just steps from where we stood 30 years ago, protesters are maintaining an encampment that's hostile to Jewish students who've tried to pass through.
I'm not sure we could do that reading now.
But now is when we need that opportunity to remember, to teach and to learn. We need to figure out how to move forward from such a dangerous moment, how to allow the space to protest — while shutting down the space to hate.
There's a way to do both. There's plenty of room for legitimate criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government's handling of the war in Gaza. And there's room to voice that criticism while rejecting the antisemitism that has pervaded it. President Joe Biden did that in his own way, delaying an arms shipment to Israel even as he forcefully condemned a “ferocious surge of antisemitism” and promised his “commitment to the safety of the Jewish people” during a Yom Hashoah commemoration Tuesday. And he reiterated support for Israel as a Jewish state, a call seemingly reinforced by the very antisemitism he denounced.
But in a week bookended by the silence of Yom Hashoah and the celebration of Israeli Independence Day, that same wave of antisemitism underscores how even remembering the past may not be enough to protect our fragile present — or future.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
