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A Passover for the Palestinians

Tonight is the first Passover Seder. Jews around the world will gather with family, friends, and community to commemorate liberation. It is not clear from which ancient Egyptian Pharaoh.

But that doesn’t really matter. It is even unclear whether the Jews were ever in Egypt, never mind as slaves. Passover is a universal story of liberation, adopted by many different people of many different faiths.

No other land

We started our celebration early with a viewing of the Oscar-winning film No Other Land this morning. A heavily Jewish audience packed the Avalon Theater, which still graces upper Connecticut Avenue. The film shows the mistreatment of Palestinian villagers on the West Bank. The perpetrators are Jewish Israelis, both soldiers and settlers. It also portrays a friendship between a Jewish Israeli journalist and an Arab Palestinian activist. They share the goal of making the ongoing abuses better known, even if birth has given them different identities. In fact, they are sometimes hard to tell apart.

At the Seder tonight, there will be concern for the Jewish hostages Hamas still holds in Gaza. But there will also be concern for the mistreatment of Palestinians, both in Gaza and on the West Bank. If the Passover commemoration is to be universal, it should not exclude abuse against any fellow human beings. What the Israelis are doing to Palestinians is simply unacceptable to me.

Unfortunately, many Israelis disagree. They are determined to expel their Arab neighbors. They want “the land” for themselves and to share it with as few others as possible. Sure, a few Christians are acceptable, if that guarantees support from the American evangelical community. But even Reform Jews like me are not really welcome in Israel, partly because we don’t want to expel Palestinians.

Share it

I can understand the strong attachment of Jews to the Holy Land. I don’t understand how Jews can deny other people an attachment they themselves feel. It’s not only about religion, which goes unmentioned in No Other Land. Or language–some of the Palestinians in the film speak Hebrew fluently. The Palestinian villagers are poor people, at least some of whom have lived in the West Bank for generations. How would you ever bulldoze their homes and schools, without compensation?

Yes, this is what white Americans did to the native American population, mostly before 1900. But standards change. That doesn’t make it acceptable in 2025. And I hope I would not have supported it even in 1750. Certainly today I am not offended if native Americans remind us on whose land we live and seek just compensation. I despair that they will get it, but they are entitled at least to respect for their claims.

Today we share America with the surviving descendants of those who once were its exclusive inhabitants. That’s what Jewish Israelis need to learn to do. Instead, they are using superior military force to expand their territory and expropriate rightful residents. Might makes right can work for a while. But in the end they will need to share the land. Best to start that sooner rather than later.