A Letter from Michael Moore Regarding the Killings of Palestinians and Israelis
To My Friends and Loved Ones,
No one ever wants to wake up on a Saturday morning to a thousand dead Jews in the street. Anywhere.
SHAME!
I still have not been able to process this and I still can’t believe this is the world I live in. I was born 8+ years after the Holocaust. And now I sit and wait for the mass slaughter of Palestinians, a Semitic tribe, cousins to Jews.
Not one Palestinian helped build Auschwitz.
Not one Palestinian led a Spanish Inquisition.
Not one Palestinian in New York City turned away a boatload of Jewish refugees trying to dock here to escape the Nazis — and not one Palestinian escorted those Jews back to their death in Germany.
And yet they, the Palestinians, will now be exterminated like something less than insects by the descendants of the very people who have suffered one extermination attempt after another for 5,784 years! Cousins! Cease! The Madness! Your only true enemy for the past 2,000 years has been and still is the White “Christians”! Ask the Native Americans. Ask any Black American. Ask the Mexicans. Ask the Indigenous Peoples of the British Empire, the Vietnamese under the boot of the French, and on and on. And now this week, the people of Gaza must be wiped out or forcibly moved into the Sinai Desert? Those left behind have already had their food and their drinking water cut off (humans can only live 4 days without water).
WHY?! Palestinians didn’t take your land, your water, your fruit groves. They share the same prophets with you. They eat hummus and you eat hummus. No Palestinian ever murdered you while you were registering voters in the South. No Palestinians ever paraded with tiki torches through Charlottesville chanting “THE JEWS SHALL NOT REPLACE US!” That was US! Why not punish us? No. Instead you’ve given us great masterpieces of music, art, comedy, literature, philosophy, film, medicine, science and a moral compass which you gave us to live by, to help create a world of love and peace with each other. Now you throw your compass away? You were supposed to be our guiding light, even in the midst of unspeakable horrors. You’ve let a fascist gang take over, a group of killers who seek genocide — and our only hope of stopping them is that there are too many smart citizens of Israel who’ve already figured it out. They are asking the right questions. Why did Netanyahu pull the army back from the Gaza border? For 6-18 hours no help arrived. People were left to be slaughtered. And now comes news from the Israeli press that Netanyahu’s administration has for years been holding secret meetings with Hamas because they wanted to use them and turn them against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Divide and conquer, one of the oldest fascist tricks in the book.
But the Israeli peace movement is vibrant and loud and there is nothing like them in the U.S. When we, the few of us, tried to stop the invasion of Iraq, we were denounced and opposed by 29 Democrats in the U.S. Senate, the New York Times, and other “liberals” who called us “unpatriotic” for not “supporting the troops.”
But too many Israelis now know the truth about October 7th, and they will not go away. As the bank for this now in-progress-slaughter — a bank called the United States of America — the citizens of my country must support the voices against genocide in Israel. You do not defeat evil by becoming evil. Those with the most courage and humanity rise up and say, “NO! Never! Not I!! I will not do to others what has been done to me.”
TOMORROW: A Letter to President Biden Upon Arrival in Israel…
Thanks to our friend, Donald Borenstein, for researching and providing us with these 10 links, many of them from Israelis who are trying to get the word out to stop the impending slaughter of Palestinians. Please share.
On Netanyahu and Hamas:
“For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces”
On Netanyahu and the assassination of PM Rabin:
“Labor chief Michaeli: Rabin was assassinated with Netanyahu’s cooperation”
On the uncomfortable and widespread far-right sentiments in the current Netanyahu govt, which has now secured an emergency unified govt with its primary opposition in a time of war:
“Likud court restores member who said ‘6 million more’ Ashkenazim should burn”
On Gaza as an open air prison:
“Israel occupation makes Palestinian territories 'open-air prison', UN expert says”
On the influx of Evangelical Christian money and American right-wing support for the Netanyahu government:
On how this is not being carried out in the name of anyone but Benjamin Netanyahu:
On where this fits in to the struggle for Palestinian Liberation (written before the seige escalated):
Most importantly, if you wish to take action, call your congressperson NOW:
Jewish Voice for Peace: URGENT: Stop genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (call now)
Thanks, Michael. There is a different aspect to this story that I believe needs to be mentioned. The simple recipe for bringing down powerful nations and empires is to enrage them. When Gavrilo Princip shot crown prince Franz Ferdinand in 1914, the Austrian empire had hundreds of options for dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, they chose war, and the rest is history. Likewise, 9/11 was a horrible terrorist attack, but the main damage it did to the USA was self-inflicted. Israel now seems to be repeating the mistakes of previous empires. Nobody is denying Israel's right to defend itself, but unfortunately it failed to do so October 7th. Nobody denies Israel the right to punish the perpetrators of the horrific terrorist attack. However, killing innocent civilians as an act of revenge is madness.
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”
Thank you for speaking out...the oppressed became the oppressors. Being anti-Zionist is not anti-Semitic. Israelis do not have a right to Palestinians lands and their property. Yet we have stood silently on the sidelines for no less than 7 decades while Israel continued to overrun and expand beyond what was given to them in 1948. That gift was at the hands of Great Britain and the US who wanted to break up the last of the Ottoman Empire and they found Zionism to be a very convenient friend. Every action has a reaction. We’ve allowed Israel to marginalize and violently expel Palestinians from their homes with no retribution from the U.S. since 1967. We’re been supporting an apartheid state and now we’re supporting genocide. Where is our humanity?