It seems to us that we are rapidly approaching what feels to be inevitable.

The Israeli apartheid war machine, backed by America and a thoroughly misguided coalition of colonial allies, has no internally coherent reason to stop the catastrophic slaughter and displacement of Palestinians. Victory is in sight. Blood spilled is merely the red carpet announcing Israeli state consolidation. This is the fulfillment of the Zionist dream, and the realization of biblical prophecy.

Manifest destiny.

And all of it supersedes the crying out of indigenous innocents and basic human decency.

All of it flies in the face of post-Holocaust global ethics, established by the Jewish people who built a culture of advocacy around their tragic narrative of diaspora, marginalization, and near-extermination.

“Never again!” they said.

Not for us. Not for anybody.

Exceptions

The hypocrisy is blatant and the world is a witness.

New off-shore oil contracts are being negotiated as this portion of the Israeli genocidal campaign draws to a close. Israel will attempt to recoup military expenditures through further exploitation. Resettlement of the Palestinian people will take time, but it will happen.

There will be survivors. They will grow up angry.

The Israeli state, emboldened and arrogant, will continue its campaign of settler agitation within the West Bank. There will almost certainly be some “provocation” from the Palestinians living there, forcing Israel’s hand and the violence will begin anew.

But things will be different.

The people of the world are not yet entirely bereft of their humanity. Those displaced by the Gaza campaign will tell their stories. As American intervention in the region expands, so too will the number of American dead. With 50% of Americans already crippled by housing costs, the cost of global war will be calculated against a the influx of refugees seeking asylum, a broken healthcare system, inflated grocery bills, and the mysterious monopolies and monied interests behind all of it.

Conspiracy theories will run rampant.

A Warning

Fueled by desperation and ignorance, people will attempt to localize their frustration. It is at this point, we believe, that the Jewish people will once again find themselves at the epicenter of hostilities.

They used our money to fund the war. They tricked us by manipulating the news. We were duped by Jewish influence in Hollywood. They control the banks and they’ve bought our politicians. Our sons and daughters are dying because of them. All of these problems are really only one problem.

The Jews.

Many of us advocating for Palestinian sovereignty are heartened by Jewish participation. There are many in the Jewish community, perhaps even a majority, who see the Netanyahu regime as an abomination. They are working hard to distance themselves from what is being portrayed as the mainstream narrative: unabashed support for the Israeli state.

And while we appreciate Jewish advocacy, we do not imagine that they are any more altruistic than the rest of us. Yes- they absolutely recognize the horrors perpetrated against the Palestinians in their name, but they are working tirelessly to save their own skins.

That’s not a criticism. It does not diminish their support. We point this out only to underscore our belief that a tidal wave of unprecedented anti-Jewish sentiment will eventually follow the Israeli “victory” in Gaza and they know that. We’re just amplifying it for the tone-deaf.

There can be no hope of justice for any of us unless there is justice for all of us.

Jewish Targets

Gaza is the first battle in a much longer war that will, we believe, be the death knell of Israel and put Jewish people everywhere in a very precarious situation. Vengeful and disillusioned people will not take the time to figure out which Jews backed the Israeli offensive and which Jews stood against it.

They will all be targets.

Our defeat in Gaza is an opportunity for Muslims to model the magnanimity of the victor, for that is ultimately our station. This is a message that may feel premature, saturated as we are by the suffering of the Palestinian people, their destruction framed by some as a defensive action necessitated by a history of Jewish victimization.

How then can we be expected, in this moment, to lend any more consideration to the pitiful Jewish legacy?

Short answer: it’s not an expectation.

What is expected is that we will continue the cycle of self-pity and blaming and vengeance. What is expected is that we will model the behavior of our oppressors in keeping with an instinctual trauma response. And this will go on and on with various camps and factions rising up to put a finer and finer edge on the swords they will use to cut down others.

It is certainly not expected that Muslims will stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters as we sort through the post-Gaza morass.

But it is our hope.

The High-Road

Kindness toward the Jewish people, even as we continue to dismantle the Israeli apartheid regime and fight for Palestinian liberation, is our opportunity to break the cycle of violence and oppression through our nobility in this defeat.

It is our opportunity to avoid the dreadful mistake of the Jewish people who embraced their victimhood as a rallying cry, who galvanized support for the Israeli project by forever centering their legacy of disgrace. Ugly is as ugly does, and when your identity is inextricably linked to deprivation, there can be nothing but depravity from you.

We are better than that. We are the khulafah, the stewards, the exemplars, the best of creation.

And He has subjected to you whatever is in the heavens and on earth- all from Him. Indeed in that are signs for a people who reflect.

Q45:13

Losing Gaza cannot be our excuse to lose ourselves. Gaza falling is the beginning of Islamic moral ascendancy in the modern age, a morality centered upon the compassionate nobility that wells up from a deep awareness of our transcendent magnificence.

We will not participate in the rabid pogroms to come. We will not bother ourselves trying to differentiate who stood where when. We are shelter.

All are safe with us.

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