Refusing to name the Final Solution in Gaza
The ancestors demand justice for the living.
“I was in danger of verbalizing my moral impulses out of existence.” — Daniel Berrigan, on trial in Baltimore for pouring napalm on draft papers in Catonsville, Maryland
It is August 14, 2025, and there are Palestinian people dying in bombings and a famine perpetrated by Israel and its allies, including the United States. Experts warn that the stage of starvation is such that even if food is delivered now, there will be no recovery for some. This, in my opinion, moves beyond the ethnic cleansing stage of genocide to the Final Solution stage.
I invoke Final Solution very deliberately here — I mean to evoke images of the Holocaust. I do this because it is true. I do this because I am desperate to draw attention to the Nakba, the catastrophe. I do this also because in the Black spiritual traditions that I — a Black queer Jew — was raised in, we honor the trauma of the ancestors by refusing to accept its repetition. If I do not look at Palestinian suffering under Zionism and see it for what it is, then I am refusing to look at Jewish, Roma, and trans/queer suffering under the Nazis and see it for what it was.
In the face of powerful governments making choices that are out of sync with public opinion, it is easy to indulge feelings of powerlessness, especially in a moment when the U.S. government is becoming increasingly authoritarian. It is normal to feel afraid.
My response to this moment, my refusal to be silent, is because of Steven Spielberg’s rendering of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who used his Nazi party membership as cover to protect the lives of 1200 Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Watching Schindler’s List in the theater when it came out was one of my most formative Jewish experiences. It had been a year since my primary school in London (UK) had done a unit on World War II and the Holocaust. We visited a Synagogue as part of the unit, and we also visited various parts of London that had been bombed. I began having nightmares — and my first anxiety attacks.
So, when Schindler’s List came out a year later, I was primed. I had a visceral sense of the trauma — as much as someone far removed from the situation possibly could. And it gave me a lot to think about as a young person grappling with what her relationship to Jewishness might be. I remember discussing with my grandmother Selma how the film made me think about the difference between saying “the Jewish people” and “the Jews.” I came to understand that sometimes people used the latter as a racist epithet, the way people said “the Blacks” when talking about people like me and my mom.
But perhaps most memorable for me was Schindler’s farewell scene, which you can watch here:
This is the scene that has stayed with me into my adult life. Specifically, this part was seared on my brain, even though I never saw the film again:
SCHINDLER
This car. Goeth would've bought this car.
Why did I keep the car? Ten people,
right there, ten more I could've got.
(looking around)
This pin -
He rips the elaborate Hakenkreus, the swastika, from his lapel
and holds it out to Stern pathetically.
SCHINDLER
Two people. This is gold. Two more people.
He would've given me two for it. At least one.
He would've given me one. One more. One
more person. A person, Stern. For this.
One more. I could've gotten one more person
I didn't.I have never forgotten the lesson of this scene, which is that with the power in our hands, we are always making choices. There’s a lot to criticize about the scene overall, like the idea that these Jews are supposed to comfort a gentile through his guilt. It promotes the idea that those who are not murdered should be grateful.
But for me the lesson wasn’t that people should be grateful to me when I am generous with them. Instead it was that I should live my life so that I don’t have to ask myself whether I refused to save lives.
I will ask myself anyway, I am sure. As I should. As we all should.
This is on my mind as Jews around the U.S. prepare for the Days of Awe — beginning with Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) and ending with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). How can we atone for the ultimate sin against G-d?
We cannot. And of course, the number of Christian Zionists in the U.S. outnumbers all the Jews in the world, much less Zionist Jews. I don’t believe that Jews as a group are uniquely responsible for the Final Solution currently underway in Palestine, but whether we like it our not, we have a unique relationship to it. Whether we like it or not, we are the excuse, it happens in our name. Whether we like it or not, American institutionalized Judaism has largely backed nearly every stage. That includes the Reconstructing Judaism movement, which my own temple is a member of. That includes my temple, where our Rabbi has discouraged us from using the word “genocide” to describe what Israel is doing to Palestinians, even though there is pretty much universal consensus on this from human rights organizations, even Zionist organizations within Israel.
How can we confront the Final Solution and oppose the logics that make it possible, if we refuse to name it? The Torah teaches us that words are powerful, particularly names. The refusal to name a genocide a genocide, in the name of keeping the peace with fellow Jews who refuse to acknowledge reality, is to prioritize those Jewish relationships over Palestinian humanity. This is Jewish supremacy. And it is a sin — any kind of supremacy is a sin that comes with the threat of genocide. I do not see how you can atone for this.
I have stopped paying my dues. I have tried reasoning with my Rabbi, even pointing out that diminishing the severity of each Palestinian’s experience with Zionism puts me and other Jews of color in danger, but I have not succeeded. I have tried to stay in a position to at least be a thorn in the side of those who don’t want to hear it — and that is why I have stayed. But for the most part I am repeating myself. The only new thing I have to offer at this point, nearly two years in, when even the President of J Street admits this is a genocide, is this lesson: if you don’t change your position on this, you will continue to proactively be one of the reasons Israel gets away with this. You will be asking yourself harder questions than the fictional Oskar Schindler asked himself because you will be one of the reasons there is still an increasing amount of irreversible damage to Palestinian families: the deaths of people who cannot be brought back.
What matters more than your aversion to calling Israel’s actions “genocide” is the fact that a genocide is happening. Stop verbalizing your moral impulses out of existence by hemming and hawing about whether a genocide is a genocide. The situation is urgent. The ancestors are calling out to us, screaming never again! A genocide is happening; act accordingly.