I read a Facebook post by a friend expressing outrage at how Jewish Buddhist teachers, along with lots of American Jews, stay dumb and quiet in the face of what Israel is doing in Gaza. I don’t stay dumb and quiet. I’ve written about this, spoken about this, and will probably demonstrate against it. To be blunt, there is no staying silent in the face of what is being done in the name of Zionism today. There may be lots of nuances and reservations, but the bottom line is this: There is no staying silent right now.

Start with the nuances. Yes, Israel is a religious state; they say openly that it’s a homeland for Jews. They also say it’s a democracy but have not yet fully grappled with how the two go together.

It is not a racist state. 50% of Israelis are from families originating in the Middle East and northern Africa who were thrown out of their respective countries after 1948, the founding of Israel. If you look at photos of Israeli hostages and those of Palestinian injured or dead with no name or accompanying description, I dare you to guess who’s Israeli and who’s Palestinian.

This is not a country where most people are white with blonde hair and blue eyes, this is a country where most have an olive complexion with dark hair and eyes. They eat the same hummus and drink the same strong Arab coffee, they enjoy the same music, and their sense of humor—dry and low-key—is the same. It’s like two brothers killing each other.

Nor are Israelis colonizers, certainly no more than the people who came into Israel after the Romans kicked out the big majority of Jews.

If you want to compare Israel with the US or Western European countries who colonized the Americas, Africa, and Asia, you’d have to show me the archeological, DNA, and historic evidence for how the Brits were in South Africa millennia ago, the Spanish in Mexico before the Aztecs, the Belgians in Congo before the Congolese. You’d have to show me where Algeria appeared in the French nation’s New Testament or how Indonesia figured in Holland’s religious teachings.

Israel has been at the core of Judaism much as Tibet is at the core of Tibetan Buddhism. If the Tibetans return to take over Tibet hundreds of years from now, will you call them colonizers because Chinese families already live there?

You don’t have to call Zionism a colonizing movement, thus needlessly antagonizing lots of Jews, because the overwhelming evidence shows that what is happening now in Gaza is not just beyond all justification, it is beyond horror, almost beyond imagination. You don’t need all those Western liberal academic expressions because, for the most part, they’re confusing things, not clarifying them.

My parents fought on behalf of Zionism, on behalf of Jews having their own state, in 1948 (my father was wounded), and here is their daughter saying that nothing can justify what Israel is doing in Gaza (they fought to defend a kibbutz one mile away from Gaza City). Nevertheless, all the nuances and niceties in the world can’t defend this.

I am very aware of what Hamas did on October 7 2024, I remember my sister calling me in disbelief and horror. I have heard second-hand about what my nephew saw when he, among the first soldiers, entered those kibbutzim and saw the women raped and killed, children and elderly tortured and murdered. It’s been thoroughly written and documented.

Even as the world vilifies us for what we’re doing, they’re not vilifying Hamas whose soldiers and commanders mix with children in schools and with patients in hospitals. Why doesn’t the world say something about that?

Maybe the world should say more about it. Hamas is a fanatic religious terror organization that seems to have no problem with sacrificing the very people it claims to defend. The same for Hezbollah in Lebanon (the Lebanese can hardly wait for them to totally disarm) and much of the same for the Iranian regime (whose own population has rebelled against them many times). These are dictatorial theocratic regimes that see no problem with creating more and more “martyrs,” only most of their martyrs never chose to die.

Since when do the Chosen People compare themselves to terror organizations? Is that your ethical model, that you’re at least better than they are? Whose hands are pulling the triggers? Whose tanks are rumbling down streets? Whose planes fire rocket after rocket, destroying entire cities that have no anti-aircraft guns, not even sirens to alert people to what’s coming? Whose drones are remotely operated to kill?

It’s not as if there are no choices. With Hezbollah and Iran greatly weakened, this is the perfect time to negotiate politically. Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the oil sheikdoms, Saudi Arabia, even Iran are looking to make deals. Not the Israeli government. They’re going for full military victory, though no one has any idea what that would look like, and if thousands of civilians pay the price, so be it.

What about the Oslo Accords? What about the deal Clinton tried to broker between Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat, which Arafat vetoed? It’s not as if we haven’t tried.

Maybe, but you haven’t really tried for 25 years. Over that quarter of a century, you did your best to undermine the Palestinian Authority and continued a process of annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. You supported the rising of the violent, virulent Hamas as an antidote to the Palestinian Authority, the well-known approach of fragmenting the opposition. You were arrogant and oblivious to the suffering of many people, including refugees.

After the Holocaust, you—and we, Jews around the world—were so enamored of the idea that we could go back to a land that was empty of people, just waiting for us with open arms (this appears in numerous Hebrew songs), that we refused to admit what was right in front of us: Other people lived there now, so what to do? Instead, we deny that there’s a problem.

I was taught that, in 1948, ¾ of a million Palestinians left Israel because “they ran.” I think that even now, that’s what kids learn. It’s very common to see plaques outside beautiful old Arab homes on Jerusalem streets with a version of this: This house belonged to the Al-Masri family since the 18^th/19^th century. In 1952 the — organization took it over, and now it’s being used by –. Every time I pass one of these I ask silently: But what happened to the Al-Masri family? Where did they go? Where are they now? Did anyone pay them any money for this house?

It’s why it’s hard for me to go back again and again. I was born there, you can’t take it out of me, but as I’ve told my siblings, I want to see you very much, but not the land.

It’s complicated, people say. Everything’s complicated. It’s true, we Americans live on land stolen from the Indians. Does that mean that I have no right calling out the atrocities of the civil war in Sudan, the Russians in Ukraine? Our own atrocities towards people of color? Life is complicated, but I adhere to the Buddha’s dictum: Do no harm. Don’t kill women and children regardless of how a terror organization didn’t distinguish one from the other. Don’t destroy homes, schools, hospitals. There are other options, examine them. In the future, how will you look at yourselves? Your own religion will judge you because the Torah says that if you don’t behave ethically, the land will vomit you out.

There is a lot more to say, but let me just end with this as a possible (though not satisfactory) answer to the question: Why don’t more Jewish Buddhists, teachers, or American Jews talk about this? I think it’s because of the deep pain and, yes, even shame that many feel.

We think of a Holocaust that destroyed one-third of the population less than 80 years ago, of the promise of a return to the land in the Middle East with its own culture, its own reborn language, and the simple virtues on which it was founded, and now see this.

I’ve talked to various teachers, and my suspicion is that it isn’t some phony Buddhist value of neutrality or not wishing to get involved that’s behind the relative silence, it’s deep pain and grief.  Zen is about ending delusion, but when certain delusions shatter, we don’t always feel relief or go into a blissful state. Maybe one day, but not now. Too much is being broken, a big bubble has burst, taking with it not just multiple lives but also certainties. I’ll write and speak of it, I’ll even demonstrate against it. And more often, I weep.