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An open letter to Elon Gold

Dear Elon, I’m sorry for the frightening confrontation you experienced. (“A Hate Incident” Jewish Journal 8/25/14)\n
[additional-authors]
August 26, 2014

Dear Elon,

I’m sorry for the frightening confrontation you experienced. (“A Hate Incident” Jewish Journal 8/25/14)

Today, all Jews in the world where news penetrates must understand that the actions of Israel are going to have repercussions on their lives, and there is no predicting how that’s going to manifest itself.  A month earlier, those four men might have passed you in their SUV and barely noticed you.  Or they may have made some crude comments amongst themselves about your family as Jews, not unlike, by the way, Jews making crude comments about goyim all the time, and much more stark comments about “middle eastern” men – like “the only good Arab is a dead Arab” which I’ve heard more than once.

In recent days of the Gaza War, Israel flattened a 10-story apartment building.  Because of phone calls made in advance, more than 400 people evacuated the building to the builder’s residence across the street, and then it was blown to smithereens, because it had been identified by Israeli intelligence as a place Hamas was “operating” out of.  Since the phone calls had left the building empty, there was no real aim to kill Hamas fighters.  It was more a punishment for the people – many of whom were not Hamas, supporters – that such a thing was allowed on their premises.  And if the phone messages had not reached everyone, if children had died, Elon, children whose faces were as “angelic” as the faces of your children, they would have been (as many have been) the collateral damage that Israel blames on a perfidious enemy that seeks to mount its own casualties as a propaganda tool.

Yes, it’s true that Hamas is pledged to destroy Israel and kill Jews.  Yes, they have fired thousands of rockets into Israel, built attack tunnels with the aim of perpetrating horrible terrorism.  Yes, they refused or broke many cease fires.  Yes, they set up operations, fighters, and rocket launching positions in civilian populated areas.  But yes, as well, hundreds of Palestinian women and children are dead, and yes, it may be, Elon, that part of Israeli strategy in its war to delegitimize and defeat Hamas is for that “collateral damage” to turn public opinion against Hamas, marginalize them and drive them from power.  And even if you don’t believe that, the fact of the civilian dead in Gaza is a fact of great power.  No middle “eastern man” perhaps predisposed to anger and hatred, emotionally jacked up on the carnage of his people, feeling secure with his buddies in the car, is going to want to debate you on the fine points of the conflict or gives a damn about your anguish over the dead on both sides, or whether or not you only “kill” on stage.

These people exist; they have always existed, and they will always exist.  And frankly, what he said to you was no more than the 2014 version of “Jew bastard” that you heard on the Bronx streets as a kid.  You survived that and prospered.  Now Israel has upped the ante, and we all have to live with it.  This is not about whether Israel is justified in its response.  That moment you experienced is not about a tiny country fighting for existence in a bad neighborhood, surrounded by people who wish it gone.  This is now their people versus ours on such a visceral level that reason has gone out of a great deal of the response.

Even among Jews, many people are realizing that who you are no longer depends on how you feel about your Judaism, or Judaism in general – on what rules and practices you follow.  It is all Israel all the time, and the litmus test is whether or not you stand with Netanyahu’s interpretation of how Israel chooses to stand in the world.  Many in Israel decried Netanyahu’s being knee-jerk sucked into a war in Gaza that has resurrected Hamas, but exposing and destroying the tunnels turns out to be a good thing.  However, killing the women and children is a bad thing, a very bad thing, so don’t expect “middle eastern” people to buy into the Golda Meir line about not being able to forgive their forcing us to kill their children.  Their children are dead.  Your little girls are momentarily traumatized but alive, and God willing, will survive and prosper like you did.

Elon, some people hate Jews, and some people very specifically hate what Israel has done to their relatives – distant or not.  There are “good and moral” people on both sides, and since you could only report a “hate incident,” not a crime, it just might be that he was one of them.  You were a “soft target” for verbal abuse by a jerk momentarily driven to distraction.  Count your blessings.

Mitch Paradise is a writer/producer and teacher living in Los Angeles. 

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