It is indeed heart-breaking to see pictures of innocent children starving in Gaza. I have lived long enough to remember decades’ worth of such images from every country around the world caught up in war. The fault lies with the far-right Israeli government and with Hamas. Despite what the pro-Hamas Left in the West want people to think, the ordinary citizens of Israel hiding in bomb-shelters are not causing Gazan children to starve, and Jewish people around the world are not causing these poor children to starve. However, far-left activists are harassing and persecuting Jews around the world as if we were PERSONALLY to blame, or as if every Jew around the world has a personal hotline to the Israeli government (shocking revelation: we don’t). Ordinary Israelis have tried many times to get Netanyahu to change his mind on a number of issues over the years, most times without success; it is like banging your head against a brick wall. Jewish people have as much chance of affecting the decisions of the hard-right Israeli government as non-Jews do.
Causing innocent people to starve is a sin. When someone has committed a sin, but haters start cursing, hating and causing deliberate harm to someone ELSE instead who has not committed that sin, such blaming and harassment is a crime. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel pain at what I see happening to the children in Gaza. I do what I can as an ordinary individual who is concerned with human rights (I’ve written to Netanyahu, never once got a response), but blaming me as a Jew for what is happening in Gaza is itself a work of evil.
When Trump does something sociopathic, do people blame all Americans? No. Whenever Sunak did something unconscionable during his time as PM, were all British Indians to blame? No. When the IRA were bombing London, were all Catholics to blame? No. So when Netanyahu and his far-right government do wicked things, why demonstrate outside Jewish shops, businesses, care homes, schools and synagogues? Why hold all Jews around the world responsible for his despicable actions?
I pray that this awful war will end soon, and that the people of Gaza will be free of everyone who oppresses them, and that the ordinary people of Israel (Jews, Christians, Druze & Muslims) will be free of the psychopaths who want to eradicate them.