Last Friday evening Jewish people around the world sat down with friends, relatives, and other loved ones for the first Seder of the Passover holiday. At these Seders, the story of the Israelites’ oppression at the hands of the wicked Egyptian pharaoh and their redemption by ways of punitive plagues and wondrous miracles are told. This story has been told every year, generation after generation, century after century. But do enough of those who observe the festival of Passover really get it? Do enough understand that the story is a universal one and while the themes may not change, the sides do? I submit that not enough Jewish people consider this.
I feel strongly that the folks who organized this particular Seder most certainly do not get “it.” Aside from being a tone-deaf insult to Palestinians and all those who believe in equal rights in Palestine, the official U.S. position on settlements is that they are bad, and one would think that the Vice-President and or her staff would be cognizant of this fact. But that would be asking too much. We are talking about Israel after all.
Meanwhile, in Palestine, Pharaoh’s militia was out in force this week, desecrating the third holiest site in Islam during Ramadan. The sides for sure have changed.
The Palestinians’ plight under their Zionist pharaohs has gone on for roughly a full century now. That century is littered with the debris of the wreckage Zionism has wrought. If Palestinians argue that the world has largely forsaken them, they are correct. Israel and its supporters have neither a plan nor a desire to institute a just outcome to one of the world’s most obscene injustices. Palestinians are supposed to just accept their unfortunate lot, because historically (certain) Jews have suffered and suffered badly as they did in ancient Egypt many millennia ago. If that’s the lesson of the Passover story, then I don’t have much at all in common with contemporary Judaism and those who practice it.
