‘Not in my name’: The European Jews condemning Israel’s war on Gaza
Jonathan Ofir conducting
Alasdair Soussi reports in Al Jazeera:
When Jonathan Ofir heard the West-led chorus of vehement condemnations of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, coupled with a flood of statements supporting the country’s right — in effect — to retaliate, he feared he knew what that meant.
“That is, a green light for Israel to carry out a much larger massacre than the one they were revenging,” said the Jewish musician, conductor and writer.
More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas attack, prompting the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare war on the armed Palestinian group. An incessant and brutal bombing campaign by Israel has since killed more than 5,100 people in the Gaza Strip, with large parts of the territory reduced to rubble in just over a fortnight. A Palestinian NGO reported that the Israeli bombing of Gaza had tragically claimed the lives of one Palestinian child every 15 minutes since the start of the conflict.
Ofir, a pro-Palestinian campaigner who was born in Israel but lives in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, is among many Europe-based Jews who are critical of Israel’s policies and have joined protests that have exploded across the continent against the ongoing attacks on Gaza.
From Glasgow to London, Paris to Barcelona, many have joined pro-Palestinian rallies to express solidarity with the people of the blockaded enclave. They represent a vocal minority of Jews that continue to make the case for the rights of a people who have lived under Israeli occupation for generations – the Palestinians – just as they have for decades.
“Israel claims Jews as its national asset, and it weaponises us, as Jews – both as bodies in the demographic battle vis-a-vis non-Jews and particularly Palestinians, and ideologically as born representatives of the Jewish state – [and] seeks to do that to Jews worldwide,” Ofir told Al Jazeera. “That claim, in turn, makes [us] the human shields of the state, as it assaults Palestinians under its settler-colonialist agenda, be it through ongoing ethnic cleansing, through siege or through seasonal massacres.”