I am twelve and sitting in an auditorium with the rest of my Hebrew School class at Temple Beth Orr. My adolescent brain has already noted that the three young Israeli guys presenting to us are cute, triggering my “oh god, why am I gay?!” shame spiral. I’m half listening to the presentation, half struggling with my never-ending angst, but my brain snaps to attention when one of the guys says something I can’t quite grok.
“And when you turn 18, all of you Jewish Warriors can come join the Israeli Army, and fight for Israel!”
What the actual fuck?
They are recruiting American Jewish kids to join the Israeli Defense Forces after graduating from high school, five or six years in the future. The selling points are that we’d get a free trip to Israel, and that the IDF is co-ed.
Also, we get a cheap golden menorah giveaway if we sign up today. The menorah is made out of the same gold-colored aluminium that McDonald’s ashtrays are made from—easily malleable, as I know from long experience turning those ashtrays into frisbees or planes.
Everyone in the group files up to sign their name and to get the chintzy, sure-to-be-short-lived cultural trinket.
Except me.
I am the only one from the entire auditorium who does not sign up. There are some choice words leveled my direction, but eventually the subject is dropped because the cute guys don’t have all evening, and “everyone minus one” is nearly as good as “everyone”.
An administrator calls my home later that evening, and my mother delivers a speech of her own, along the lines of “how dare you try to compel my twelve-year-old son to sign up for ANYBODY’S army”.
It’s 1982, and at twelve, I am patriotic. I consider myself more American than anything else, already aware that America has a complex and complicated history. Pure reverence isn’t possible, but what I have is a sense that in this place, the United States, we have a chance to learn and heal and to grow stronger together.
I am a child, curious and ever-questioning. I am teetering between agnostic and atheist—a struggle I carried into adulthood. Even at twelve, in this swirl of conflicting emotions and identities, I know that if war ever came, I would fight for America, as an American. Until today, it had never crossed my mind to think otherwise.
My hope is not on some land far away, although I do understand how important Israel is for Jewish people around the world. It just doesn’t feel mine in the way that America does.
I am gay. I am Jewish. But above all, I am an American.
Let me state some obvious things up front.
The atrocities committed by Hamas in the terror attack of October 7th, 2023 were horrific and indefensible. Israel unquestionably had a right, and a responsibility, to defend itself and protect its citizens from terrorism. Self-defense was both justified and necessary. This is just plainly true.
In that moment, Israel also had the goodwill of the entire globe. It could have done something revolutionary with that united support. Netanyahu could have created a global alliance bent on liberating the Palestinians from Hamas, freeing an entire people from tyranny. He could have worked to free the hostages through negotiation, and through targeted liberations in alliance with the best militaries in the world. He could have used anger and heartbreak to forge something potentially magnificent out of death and pain.
Netanyahu chose not to do that. He chose revenge. I admit, I can understand the urge for revenge after such an atrocity. It is a very human response.
However, I also believe that the fundamental principle of proportionality must guide any legitimate military response, regardless of the horror of the inciting violence. Proportionality is a choice, too.
Netanyahu did not choose to do that, either. He chose total war. Annihilation. The reduction of something into nothing—the destruction of something so entirely that it ceases to exist.
It’s 1985, and my father died the year prior. I am in high school, awkward and scared, but I am coming out of my shell, slowly making friends.
I am talking to one of those friends, also Jewish, about where we’d want to live someday. We ramble on about places: France, England, Japan. At some point, I joke that since we’re both Jewish, we could go live in Israel, and that we’d even be citizens.
He laughs, and then pauses, and works up the nerve to tell me that, no, actually, he could do that, but I couldn’t. I could go visit, but I couldn’t be a citizen like he could.
My mother converted to Judaism in a Reform temple when my parents got married. This was important; Judaism is matrilineal. She was converting so that my sister and I, upon our births, would be born to a Jewish mother, and thus also be Jewish.
Except, according to the strict rabbinical laws that govern Israel, we aren’t Jewish at all. Maybe we’re “Jew-ish”? Judaism doesn’t love converts. And lo, best not to be a Reform convert—that’s not Jewish enough by some order of magnitude.
In the United States, where Jews are less than two percent of the population, I am Jewish enough to experience anti-Semitism. That’s a strange kind of quasi-credibility, is it not? An alternate sort of blood quantum.
It’s weird, growing up aware that you are Jewish enough for the Nazis to hate you. Jewish enough that I would have been forced to wear a yellow Star of David in Nazi-occupied Europe, and probably a pink triangle to boot. Jewish enough that I would have easily been rounded up for the ovens or gas chambers.
But I’m not Jewish enough for Israel.
It’s almost funny, like a sad little joke. Years later, I tried working it into lyrics for that Alannis Morrisette song, but never quite fit the meter.
Ironic, don’t ya think? A little too ironic.
Here is another thing that is plainly true to me: it is beyond my comprehension that a nation born out of the horrors of the Holocaust could even contemplate actions reminiscent of those dark times.
And yet, this moral paradox has become an everyday reality in the news of 2025. Israeli Defense Forces ambushed a Palestinian emergency crew, killing all 15 of the emergency workers. That’s Tuesday.
Israeli Defense Forces then murdered the 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was a witness to the emergency crew ambush. That’s Thursday.
If your response to that is something along the lines of “that’s the nature of war”, then I am sorry to say that not only do I not accept your reasoning, I don’t even want to know you.
Israel, once a symbol of hope, resilience, and sanctuary, has allowed itself to become synonymous with the violent suppression and collective punishment of an entire population. How did we let that happen? That isn’t proportional, and it isn’t a targeted strike to effect regime change; it is terroristic retribution on an entire people.
Nietzsche once said, “beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Wisdom from the 1880s that still rings true, even as it was coopted and twisted by the Nazis during their turn at being the king of terror.
The warning has always seemed so clear to me: don’t become the thing you hated. Don’t become the monster that tried to kill you.
O, Israel, what are you doing?
It’s 1989, and I am attending the University of Florida. I know that I am gay. I have told no one yet, but I know who I am.
I am watching the news and seeing stories about AIDS, and it terrifies me. I’m still a virgin, and the prospect of that ending any time soon seems remote—nothing is safe. There is no social safety in coming out, nor physical safety—that’s how it seems to me.
There’s a church across from campus. One of those Unitarian hippie churches—the kind that welcomes everyone, and declares it on a large banner in rainbow colors.
It takes months, but eventually I work up the courage to sit in the back row for a service or two. People are nice, but I’m nervous, and nothing comes of it.
It will take me four more years to come out.
I look around campus for a synagogue with a similarly welcoming message, and I don’t find anything. Maybe it’s Florida. Maybe it’s Judaism. Who knows? How could I know—honestly? Pre-Internet, how would one go about learning such things, desperately alone and scared?
All I know is that the ACT UP! people chant SILENCE = DEATH, and I slowly come to believe them, both for myself, and as the years progress, about every fundamental belief I hold.
To say nothing is to be complicit. To be silent–out of cowardice, or lack of faith, or for whatever reason—is to welcome death. It may be your own, or that of others, or both; it doesn’t matter. Being silent in the face of massive injustice kills people, and it kills your own soul.
Is this not still true?
Let’s say it plainly. What we are witnessing now in Gaza—the wholesale devastation of civilian infrastructure, unprecedented civilian casualties, and the collective punishment of an entire population—far exceeds legitimate self-defense. Israel’s moral authority diminishes significantly when actions meant to protect Israeli lives become indistinguishable from revenge inflicted on innocent Palestinians.
The scenes coming out of Gaza are nothing short of catastrophic.
Hospitals reduced to rubble, families buried beneath their homes, children orphaned and traumatized—this is the human cost of Israel’s current military assault. While there might be technical debates about whether these actions meet the strict legal definition of genocide, morally, there can be no doubt.
What Israel is inflicting upon Gaza—upon millions of innocent Palestinian civilians—is an atrocity that betrays everything Judaism taught me to value.
If we cannot tell our brothers and sisters that they have lost their way, who can?
If I cannot tell my friend that he is cutting off his nose to spite his face, who can?
If I, an American Jew with a complicated relationship to Israel cannot look at this atrocity and demand that it stop, that it not be done in my name, that none of this can be done in my fucking name—who can?
Netanyahu, you fucking monster, cease this genocide, and pray for mercy on your soul!
And await your arraignment in The Hague.
I am twenty-five, and I’m sitting in my attic apartment in Seattle. It’s cold and rainy outside, and I’m watching my small TV when news breaks that Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, has been assassinated.
I fall to my knees, crying. I’m weeping with my hands over my eyes, feeling gutpunched. My housemate, a Christmas-and-Easter Christian, cannot understand the magnitude of my despair. How can I explain?
Rabin had just signed the Oslo Accords, the peace plan that was the most significant progress towards a two-state solution the world had yet seen. It seemed like some logjam had been broken. Peace in the Middle East was possible, and the river of history was shifting into its new bed, hopeful and becalmed.
Rabin, a former Defense Minister, a hero of the 1967 War, had the respect and gravitas to get a deal done. He had campaigned on making the two-state solution real—and he had won.
And now, on this day, November 4th, 1995, he is dead in a Tel Aviv square that will later bear his name in memoriam, felled by a right-wing Israeli settler who didn’t want to be pushed off “his” land.
Equally burned into my brain: later seeing a young and ambitious Benjamin Netanyahu interviewed about Rabin’s death, smugly asserting that it might mean that the two-state solution was off the table for good.
I’m not saying Netanyahu knew of any plot against Rabin, but who benefited most from Rabin’s death politically?
Whose political ascendancy has been built on the destruction of any hope that a two-state solution might ever be enacted?
Whose current freedom depends on a never-ending war in which his Prime-Ministership cannot end, for fear of finally facing corruption charges?
Netanyahu, the (alleged) war criminal.
Netanyahu’s legacy, now fully manifest in his extreme right-wing government, is one of division, fear, and increasingly authoritarian rule. Like Donald Trump in the United States, Netanyahu prioritizes personal political survival above all else, exploiting fear, resentment, and nationalism to maintain his grip on power.
How do these assholes keep getting away with it?
Under his leadership, the Israeli state has moved further and further away from democratic values and closer to authoritarian aggression.
And let’s be honest, Netanyahu’s actions are not protecting Jewish people; instead, they are fueling a global rise in antisemitism. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), antisemitic incidents worldwide have sharply increased, correlating directly with intensified Israeli military campaigns.
The ADL's annual reports repeatedly highlight that periods of heightened Israeli-Palestinian violence correlate with spikes in antisemitic incidents globally. Rather than ensuring Jewish safety, Netanyahu’s government has made Jews around the world more vulnerable to hatred and violence.
A 2021 Human Rights Watch report explicitly described Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories as "crimes of apartheid," further stressing the urgency of a negotiated political resolution, before the terror of October 7th. Multiple studies indicate that only a two-state solution—with genuine autonomy, mutual recognition, and international guarantees of security—can deliver lasting peace.
Netanyahu’s ongoing sabotage of these efforts, whether through relentless settlement expansion in the West Bank or repeated military escalations in Gaza, is not only politically reckless but morally reprehensible. He achieved his original goals in response to October 7th and kept going, seeming to realize that the world would sit fecklessly by and let him get away with it.
The policies of Israel under Netanyahu have never been about peace. They have been about creating settlements with impossible-to-rationalize borders. They have been about keeping the Palestinians poor, hungry, and suffering.
And now the world has seen, with the tragedy of October 7th as his weakening shield, Netanyahu has dragged the twin claws of chaos and death across the face of Gaza, killing tens of thousands.
Nazis, Iran, and antisemites everywhere must be rejoicing.
None of them has done more damage to the reputation of Israel and Jews everywhere as Netanyahu has in less than one year.
Anyone who tells you that Israel is safer with Netanyahu in charge, at this stage, that person is either a liar, a fool, or a lying fool.
It is 2000, and I am at the large Barnes & Noble near my workplace in downtown Seattle. The store is two stories, plush with reading chairs and a cafe. It’s magnificent.
The magazine section is equally incredible. I spend countless hours on lunch breaks and time lingering after work, perusing the turn-of-the-century periodical cornucopia. There are magazines for every niche, every hobby, every way of thinking and being.
During this time, I discover Tikkun magazine: an eye-opening revelation for me. A hippie-Jewish clarion call from Berkeley. A Jewish thought magazine where Palestinians and Jews are published with equal weight.
And the internet exists, oh my, yes, so I can research to my heart’s content.
Tikkun Olam is a Hebrew phrase meaning “repairing the world”. It is a foundational Jewish concept emphasizing social justice, compassion, and ethical responsibility. Rooted in both religious teachings and secular Jewish culture, Tikkun Olam urges individuals and communities to actively engage in actions that promote justice, alleviate suffering, and contribute positively to society.
It is Social Justice Warrior before #SJW exists.
It calls upon Jews—and indeed all humanity—to heal the brokenness of the world, encouraging moral responsibility, community engagement, and a profound commitment to human rights and dignity.
Something in me reawakens. Some sense that there is a meaning and a mission in faith, and that this heritage of my forebearers means something to me beyond the cultural inheritance of Hannukah and Seinfeld.
I am in my 30s, and it has taken me until now—and through pure magazine-based chance—to find this connection to the essence of what being an American Jew can mean to me.
No one taught it to me. It was not a heritage that I was handed. No grandparent, or parent, or aunt, or uncle, or Rabbi in my thirty years had ever said the words Tikkun Olam to me.
Why?
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tikkun Olam serves as a powerful reminder of Judaism’s intrinsic values of empathy and peace, starkly contrasting with the current actions taken by Netanyahu’s government in Gaza.
Judaism teaches compassion, justice, and the importance of protecting the vulnerable, yet Netanyahu’s Israel bombards neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals, leaving thousands of innocents dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
The fighting in Gaza is no longer self-defense. This is collective punishment, revenge for Hamas's October 7th attacks indiscriminately wielded against all Palestinians, including children.
We must reaffirm the necessity of a two-state solution as the only viable path toward sustainable peace. Decades of research and countless diplomatic efforts underline this reality. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem unanimously endorse the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel to end a system that looks more and more like Apartheid.
These organizations consistently document how continued settlement expansion, military occupation, and blockade of Gaza are systematic obstacles deliberately imposed by Netanyahu’s government to prevent peace.
We can’t stay silent any longer.
If fear and doubt have kept me silent too long, I am sorry.
Please forgive me.
It’s May 27th of 2025, and all of this terror and tragedy is happening at the behest of an extremist Israeli government, and yet none of this is happening in my name. I do not need a watermelon emoji or an Israeli flag emoji to explain my side in this conflict; I am taking the human side—the side that says all murder is wrong, that all of us should strive to live in peace.
None of this aligns with the Judaism I learned from my family, from my community, and from my own heart. We, as Jews, have a unique historical responsibility to speak truth to power, especially when that power claims to act in our collective name.
It is precisely because of our history, our experiences of persecution and genocide, that we must categorically reject the violence committed by Netanyahu’s government.
Israel's current path does not lead to safety or peace; it leads only to further tragedy, isolation, and suffering.
My Jewish identity, hapa and fractured and possibly incomplete, compels me to reject violence committed in the name of my people.
It demands that I stand unequivocally for human dignity, justice, and compassion.
For all who share this identity, silence is complicity.
SILENCE = DEATH.
We must declare, loudly and clearly, that these atrocities do not speak for us.
It is time for American Jews and progressives everywhere to reclaim our voices, to recommit ourselves to justice, peace, and Tikkun Olam.
Only then can we begin repairing not just Gaza, but the moral fabric of our world.
Blessed are you, O lord our god, King of the Universe: please let it not be too late.
Lawrence Winnerman is a queer, middle-aged GenX writer living in the Midwest after decades on the West Coast. He writes about politics and culture on genXy.io. He also writes queer dystopian Sci-Fi at Lawrence Winnerman | Science Fiction.
Your voice. Your passion. Your humanity. It's all palpable here, my dear friend. Your voice is important. It is necessary. It is vital.
Expertly written, my friend. Thank you for speaking with such fire.
Hey Lawrence, I love how you poured your heart into this article. Thank you for inspiring me through your courage to speak out for peace and Tikkun Olam