When dozens of protestors halted traffic on a major Los Angeles highway this week, it was the latest in a string of major public calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. The demonstration, led by the notorious anti-Israel group IfNotNow, followed a vote for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas from 153 countries (the U.S. voted against) during an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly.
As an Israeli Jew who helped Palestinian civilians during my five year service in the Israeli Defense Forces, I would love nothing more than for our two peoples to live side by side in peace. Innocent Palestinians deserve every freedom and to realize their national aspirations. Sadly, the only thing standing between us and a ceasefire is Hamas, a terrorist organization whose raison d'etre is to eliminate Israel and kill Jews.
For this reason alone, calls for a ceasefire are neither a commitment to human rights nor an effort to preserve life. Instead, they are a demand that Jews not defend themselves from genocide.
To pretend that this isn't the case not only ignores the reality on the ground but is deeply antisemitic and an outright denial of the Indigenous connection and national rights that Jews have to Israel.
Public demands for a ceasefire will do little more than serve an aggressor who has violated past ceasefires at will, including on Oct. 7 when Hamas violated an existing ceasefire in order to kill, torture, rape, and kidnap thousands of innocent people. In 2014 alone, Israel agreed to nine truces were implemented during a 51-day conflict. Even a poll from the Washington Institute of Near East Policy on October 10th showed that a majority of Gazans themselves did not support breaking the latest ceasefire agreement, something Hamas leadership did without regard to the agreement or the lives of citizens on both sides.
A ceasefire requires not one but two partners, yet the international community continues to turn its head away from the fact that a ceasefire is not a goal for Hamas. Hamas' objective is to kill Jews, an objective its pattern of breaking past ceasefires has made clear. As unpleasant as the reality is, calls for a ceasefire are calls to perpetuate and promote antisemitic violence against innocents.
One can criticize Israel without being antisemitic, the pro-Palestinian faction says. I agree with that statement. But calling for a ceasefire at this juncture is not criticism; it's a dogwhistle, a demand that Jews to lay down and accept the attacks against them.
Calls for ceasefire also conveniently ignore the connection between Israel and Jews. Zionism is a movement for the re-establishment of the Jewish nation of Israel following centuries of Jewish diaspora. Formally established in 1948, Israel became a beacon of hope for Jews worldwide experiencing persecution.
My own family exemplifies this reality. Concurrent with the Holocaust in Europe, Jews in the Middle East faced violent dispossession just for being Jewish. My Iraqi grandmother was just a child in 1941 when she experienced the Farhud, a two-day pogrom against the Jewish population of Baghdad. During these days of antisemitic violence, my grandmother witnessed her best friend being raped and murdered in the streets of Iraq, just for being Jewish. Meanwhile, Tunisian Jews like my paternal grandfather were conscripted to detention camps and forced labor in a gulag, where conditions were barbaric.
Even though we and the world have seen all this before, Israel nevertheless committed to a ceasefire on November 21, an agreement that included an exchange of all hostages taken on October 7 as well as Hamas putting a stop to all missiles launched into Israel. Predictably, Hamas began firing rockets into Israel fifteen minutes into that ceasefire. They also slaughtered four Israelis on Nov. 30 in Jerusalem, and continued attacking Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
To those with genuine hearts who just want the suffering and carnage to stop, know that I am with you. I understand the hurt you are feeling and pray every day for an end to this war so we can begin the difficult process of healing and peace.
As hopeful as I am, I am also realistic: Hamas started this war on Oct. 7, and the only thing that guarantees an end to all the pain and suffering for Israelis and Gazans is for Hamas to lay down its weapons and release the 135 hostages.
Pressuring Israel, which is on a rescue mission to release its citizens from captivity and bring a group of barbaric death agents to justice, will do nothing to bring peace of mind to humanity or peace to the region.
I am certain that this is clear to many of those calling for a ceasefire. But much like the chant "from the river to the sea," the calls for "a ceasefire" have turned into another thinly veiled euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish state that is meant to fool the American public.
Hen Mazzig is a Senior Fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute and the author of The Wrong Kind of Jew: A Mizrahi Manifesto.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Calls for Ceasefire Are an Antisemitic Demand—Jews Must Accept Our Genocide
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17.12.2023
When dozens of protestors halted traffic on a major Los Angeles highway this week, it was the latest in a string of major public calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. The demonstration, led by the notorious anti-Israel group IfNotNow, followed a vote for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas from 153 countries (the U.S. voted against) during an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly.
As an Israeli Jew who helped Palestinian civilians during my five year service in the Israeli Defense Forces, I would love nothing more than for our two peoples to live side by side in peace. Innocent Palestinians deserve every freedom and to realize their national aspirations. Sadly, the only thing standing between us and a ceasefire is Hamas, a terrorist organization whose raison d'etre is to eliminate Israel and kill Jews.
For this reason alone, calls for a ceasefire are neither a commitment to human rights nor an effort to preserve life. Instead, they are a demand that Jews not defend themselves from genocide.
To pretend that this isn't the case not only ignores the reality on the ground but is deeply antisemitic and an outright denial of the Indigenous connection and national rights that Jews have to Israel.
Public demands for a ceasefire will do little more........
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