By Gerry Weiss

I feel it is important for our community to talk about the Israeli war on Palestinians because it affects us all in different ways. There are Palestinian Americans living in Amherst who watch and listen to and read with horror what is happening to their homeland, what is happening to their loved ones, who go to bed every night not knowing if someone they love will be killed by morning. Imagine living in another country, paying taxes to send bombs that will obliterate your birth place and kill friends and family.

There are Jews in Amherst who have relatives in Israel, who may have lost relatives in the October attack by Hamas. Some of those Amherst residents might be glad to pay taxes to bomb Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. And there are Jews in Amherst, like myself, who are horrified by the carnage and destruction and doubly horrified that they are helping to pay for that carnage.

There are many of us in Amherst, who believe we are witnessing genocide. The Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 by the United Nation, defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.

In my mind, this defines what is happening in Palestinian lands. “Never again”, means never again to anyone. The day may come in the future when the question will be asked, as it was after WWII, “why didn’t the world stop the madness?” One could ask, “what did Amherst MA do when the Palestinian genocide took place?” Can we do more than issue a statement supporting a ceasefire? Where does the Amherst community stand on this war and the US role in it?

I am an anti-Zionist Jew. By all accounts, nearly everyone in my paternal grandmother’s family was murdered by the Nazis. (How she escaped that fate is an interesting, but off-topic tale for another day.) I grew up in a Zionist family in a largely Zionist Jewish community. Growing up, I didn’t know there was a very different history and narrative other than the Zionist one. In my adulthood, I now know the other narrative. It reads like this: Israel has been engaging in a slow but devastating ethnic cleansing of Palestine since 1948; an ethnic cleansing that had its roots in the late 1800’s when Theodore Herzl, a European Jew, known as the father of Zionism, began planning for the occupation of Palestine with the concomitant displacement of the native population. He soon had an ally in Great Britain who aided him in this plan that came to fruition in 1948. Since 1948, Israel has subjected Palestinians to displacement with no right of return, the seizure of their land which continues to this day, military sieges, imprisonment, second class citizenship, torture and murder. After the massacre of Israelis last October 7 by Hamas, Israel has stepped up these actions and has bombed Gaza, and now Lebanon, with US-supplied weapons (your tax dollars) ceaselessly. Over 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed; mostly women and children according to the UN. People are being starved; most of the schools have been destroyed as well as over half of Palestinian homes and most of the hospitals along with roads and farms. Humanitarian aid is being blocked.

Given the history since 1948 along with the incredible disproportionate response to October 7, isn’t it time for this madness to stop? I know not everyone agrees with this assessment and I am glad to discuss this with anyone who wishes to. And I know I am far from alone.

Gerry Weiss has lived in Amherst since 1980. He served on the Amherst Select Board from 2004-2010. Currently, he’s the President of Craig’s Doors and a member of a group called Amherst for Palestine (formerly Amherst for a Ceasefire).