All Trauma Is Valid… Unless You’re an Israeli Jew

Naomi Klein has written a 6260-word essay in the Guardian, accusing Israelis of “weaponizing” the trauma of October 7. Klein lets it be known that she “openly grieved the Israeli civilians killed in the 7 October attacks.” But, she muses at length, do the Israeli people and legacy Jewish organizations have to do so much memorializing them: producing art, theater, exhibitions, documentaries? Aren’t the volume and speedy production of this “sprawling memory culture” highly unusual? Where Jews have found comfort in sharing pain, and a refuge amid skyrocketing antisemitism—including pervasive denial that atrocities even took place—Klein sees a cynical ploy to generate sympathy for Israel’s war aims.

Where Jews have found comfort in sharing pain, and a refuge amid skyrocketing antisemitism—including pervasive denial that atrocities even took place—Klein sees a cynical ploy to generate sympathy for Israel’s war aims. 

In all her writing, Klein has shown a profound lack of empathy for the victims of October 7,  including women survivors of sexual violence. Whether they are Jewish and Israeli, or Arab, Bedouin, African, Hispanic, Asian, American or European, their experiences are consistently decentered and marginalized by Klein, subsumed by her animus toward the existence of  Israel — the Jewish right to collective political self-determination and freedom. She deems efforts to tell the survivors’ stories manipulative, attempts to peddle “a simple fable of good and evil, in which Israel is unblemished in its innocence, deserving unquestioning support, while its enemies are all monsters, deserving of violence unbounded by laws or borders, whether in Gaza, Jenin, Beirut, Damascus or Tehran.” 

The humanity and human rights of survivors of October 7 disappear within Klein’s fluid prose. When acknowledged in passing, it is only to further her argument against the state in which those attacked on October 7 lived and of which the vast majority were citizens. In so doing, Klein objectifies and instrumentalizes survivors, adding to their suffering and potentially contributing to their retraumatization. 

Klein also claims that it is wrong for the October 7 survivors and others to relate them to the Holocaust. Just because October 7 was the worst one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, carried out with barbarity reminiscent of the Nazis, by an organization whose founding charter calls to kill every living Jew and which has vowed to repeat October 7 until the Jewish state is eliminated and thousands more Jews are murdered, it’s apparently absurd to link October 7 to the most shattering trauma of the Jewish people. That Jewish people around the world have viscerally felt this connection and expressed it widely and repeatedly for a year now – including many Holocaust survivors – does not make her question her condemnation of  Jews interpretating their own history, identity, and contemporary realities of antisemitism. 

Among the many venerable organizations Klein spuriously criticizes for conflating the Holocaust with October 7, she names the USC-based Shoah Foundation, who have recorded the testimonies of survivors of the massacre as part of their collection of testimonies. 

There are many reasons why the USC foundation’s collection of testimonies of victims of the October 7 massacres is valuable and important. Among them are to refute the widespread global misogyny directed at the Jewish women victims of sexual violence, denial of the massacres, and rising antisemitism in the United States and globally. Another is so that people like Klein, who devalue the victims of October 7, can — if and when they are ready to feel more empathy and compassion and expand their consciences — will be able to hear the stories and recognize the humanity of the individuals whose experiences they have marginalized. 

USC’s Executive Director, Robert Williams, has expressed the foundation’s reasons for collecting these testimonies with moral clarity. 

“We recognized there was an urgency to capture the voices of people who had been caught up in those events,” he said. “We immediately recognized it was an act of mass violence against Jews.” 

The Shoah Foundation has already collected over 400 testimonies and is continuing to collect more. 

Williams has said that the Shoah Foundation’s collection of testimony is “about building an awareness [of antisemitism] through testimony” and “to serve the future historical record.” 

Steven Spielberg, who envisioned, established, and funded the Shoah Foundation, has clearly and compellingly stated the importance of its work collecting testimonies of survivors of the October 7 Hamas massacres. 

“Both initiatives — recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony — seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind. We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts.”

Klein’s sneers on survivors commemorating  their own experiences and those of their loved ones demeans survivors and denies them agency. 

None are compelled to provide their testimonies; they choose to do so. 

The Shoah Foundation should continue to honor their wishes to provide testimonies, irrespective of Klein’s denigration of their efforts  to tell their stories in the manner of their own choosing.

The Shoah Foundation’s aims to provide education, commemoration, and the affirmation of human rights and human dignity are all served by preserving the testimonies of survivors of the October 7 massacres alongside the other diverse testimonies they collect and preserve.

It is not for Naomi Klein, from her place of privilege and safety far from the sadistic violence and destruction of October 7, to lecture survivors on how to tell their stories, to whom, and in what contexts and forms.

It is not for Naomi Klein, from her place of privilege and safety far from the sadistic violence and destruction of October 7, to lecture survivors on how to tell their stories, to whom, and in what contexts and forms.

That is their decision to make and theirs alone.

Noam Schimmel is a Lecturer in Global Studies with an emphasis on human rights at University of California, Berkeley.