I married a Jew — and was completely unprepared for October 7th.
I married a Jew — and was completely unprepared for October 7th.
Since the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel, I have been on an emotional and psychological rollercoaster like many others across the world. Here are some of the ups and downs.
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This is a guest essay written by Meghan Bell.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Several weeks ago, a friend came up to me after a community toddler-and-caregiver hangout to ask: “Your husband is Jewish, right?”
I nodded, hesitating only a second. My friend is an immigrant from Lebanon, and Muslim. Many of our conversations revolve around our Mediterranean heritages and love of cooking from the region. (I’m Calabrian on my mother’s side.)
I’ve never detected a whiff of extremism or prejudice from her, but I’ve been on edge since October 7th. My marriage is less than four years old, and while I had Jewish friends growing up, my unfamiliarity with antisemitism and what it could mean had become very obvious over the past several months.
“I want you to know how much my family and community hate and condemn Hamas,” she said. “What they did on October 7th was an atrocity. You don’t attack civilians.”
She said that most Muslims were not extremists, and that Islam was a religion of peace.
“Muhammed had Jewish wives,”1 she added. “We don’t hate Jews.”
She acknowledged that both Jews and Palestinians were “indigenous” to the region, and emphasized, “Even if you think they’ve taken your land, you attack military targets, not civilians.”
The civilians in question, including hundreds of attendees to an Israeli music festival for peace and love, were disproportionately Left-wing, peace activists — gentle souls who did stuff like drive into Gaza to pick up sick people and take them to Israeli hospitals. Hamas had attacked, murdered, raped, and kidnapped many of the people who most wished to help the Palestinians.
At some point, my two-and-a-half-year-old ran up to hug my friend, something she almost always does when we part ways. My daughter adores this woman, and the feeling seems to be mutual. It’s crossed my mind a handful of times: “Would she be so sweet to my child if she knew she were part-Jewish?”
But of course she’d known; she’s met my husband, who is visibly Ashkenazi, and I’ve mentioned it at this hangout before.
We started talking about the anti-Israel protests. I noted that in our city — Vancouver, Canada — most of the protesters seemed to be White. If anything, the significant Muslim population in our area — largely Iranians2 — either seemed neutral/quiet on the subject, or supportive of Israel.
On social media, almost all of the extremist anti-Israel and antisemitic posts I’d seen had been from “White” people, or mixed people who were mostly White. A significant percentage of these posts came from people I knew from the very-“woke” literary scene in Canada; the others were mostly from “socialist” activists.
My friend shook her head, and in exasperated tones, we exchanged a few choice words for the mostly “White” college protesters.
“They don’t know the history,” she said.
My husband and I live blessed lives.
Naturally blond, sweet-natured, helpful, casually un-groomed, vaguely ethnic-looking, and born Vancouverites, we tend to have positive interactions with almost everyone we encounter.
I worked in the arts before motherhood; he’s spent his career working in mental health with at-risk populations; we’re the sort of people who would go to a peace-and-love music festival with a backpack full of psychedelic drugs. My biggest faith-based conflicts have been when I’ve ignorantly offered friends foods they aren’t allowed to eat because of their religion (which I’ve always been 100-percent forgiven for).
My husband’s good luck is so bizarre that we joke G-d or Spirit seems to constantly intervene on his behalf. This has passed to our child, who, with her bubbly smile and friendly energy, is universally doted on.
I started writing this after my husband and I spent a night moving furniture (we recently redid many of our floors) with an Algerian immigrant we’d hired last-minute through an app. He was sweet to our daughter, got along great with my visibly Jewish husband, and stayed 20 minutes overtime to help us hang some photos and artwork — then declined the extra money we offered him.
A month ago, a Palestinian woman attended a plant medicine ceremony my husband was at, donned a keffiyeh and made a short, balanced, heartfelt statement about suffering and sending “love” to both sides.
I believe that most people are kind, especially when you are kind to them.
I didn’t — and still don’t — know much about the conflict in the Middle East. Since October 7th, I’ve been frantically trying to catch up. I believe in engaging with both “sides” of any issue, and this one is no different.
The people who side with “Palestine” and the people who side with Israel appear to be living in two very different versions of reality.
Many of the “pro-Palestine” memes do not pass a basic fact check. Others are clearly distorted or omitting important context. Blog posts and podcasts by “pro-Palestine” activists tend toward superficiality and grandiosity, trying to shame others into adopting their views instead of presenting factual information. In the cases where the Palestinian narrative and the Israeli one conflict, the Israeli one almost always makes more logical sense (at least to me).
Dehumanizing comments are made on both sides. I see Israelis referred to as “evil” and “monsters” on Instagram. Articles and social media posts from “pro-Zionism” sources claiming there are “no innocent people” in Gaza.
I see posts claiming that Israelis are “White” oppressors and “no one cares” about the Palestinians because of their “brown skin” — when many Palestinians are light-skinned, and many Jews are not. Whether or not Ashkenazi Jews are “White” seems to be a matter of convenience and opinion, whatever justifies hatred by the group hating them. (Many on the “Woke” Left seem to be completely unaware that not all Jewish people are Ashkenazi or have any sort of connection to Poland).
There is an obvious irony in a group of mostly White and Arab young people accusing the Jewish People of being the worst kind of colonizers, when the former are the descendants of the major colonizers of the past 2,000-plus years, and the latter are less than 0.2 percent of the global population and have only a single, small country on an area of land the size of New Jersey, which is well-documented to be their ancestral home.
I have a naive tendency to assume the best of people. I click on “pro-Palestine” social media posts hoping that the friends and acquaintances sharing them are coming from a good place, not one of groupthink, or worse — hatred or resentment or a subconscious desire to scapegoat the Jews for the sins of Western civilization, colonialism, and capitalism.
Increasingly, I find it more and more difficult to believe this is the case, at least with the loudest activists.
I confronted an old friend, a White man, about some of his posts after he shared a photo of a woman holding up a sign that said “Kill them all” and implied all Israelis were genocidal toward Palestinians.
The photo turned out to be from well before October 7th, 2023; the other side of the sign made it clear the woman was only referring to terrorists held in Israeli prisons, and apparently the other activists at the rally she’d attended were so offended by the sign that she was asked to take it down almost immediately — but not before the incriminating photo was captured.
“I think you should at least entertain the idea that maybe some of your social media sources are not so reliable,” I texted him.
He sent me a photo from a “pro-Palestine” rally of some supporters from the organization “Jewish Voice for Peace” (editor’s note: which is neither Jewish nor for peace) — adding: “I can ask them if they are antisemitic lol.”
I pointed out that there are Palestinians and Muslims who support Israel too (and far more who condemn Hamas and other Muslim terrorist groups). I mentioned this multiple times over what became a heated argument spanning weeks and dozens of long text messages. He never acknowledged the point or gave any indication he followed any of the links I shared. He accused me of buying into Israel “propaganda.”
He denied that widespread rapes took place on October 7th, and claimed the IDF committed systemic rapes of Palestinian women.3 He claimed that the Arab conquests were “not a settler-colonial enterprise” but a “small military elite that the people who lived in the regions gradually adopted Islam and the Arabic language.”
He insisted that he cared about Palestinian children; I pointed out in the 18 years we’d known each other, I’d never seen him express any concern for any other group of children before. He equated Israel/“Palestine” to Russia/Ukraine. He insisted that “From the River to the Sea” was not genocidal toward Israelis or Jews. I told him to ask the people he was at the rally with what they meant by “From the River to the Sea” and report back to me. He didn’t.
At one point he sent me several bloody images from Gaza. The pictures were horrifying; but at the same time, I’ve read articles calling out Hamas for staging photos and videos to make Israel look bad. Both the idea that the photos could be real and that they could be staged horrifies me. I imagine that the truth lies in between; some are staged or exaggerated, some are probably all-too-real.
Both sides appear to be at least somewhat guilty of denial. I wrote to my friend:
“It’s the hypocrisy that bothers me. I don’t think Israel, the IDF, or Jews are above criticism. But, it seems that to you, Jews who support ‘Palestine’ discredit Zionism, but Palestinians who support Israel do not discredit anti-Zionism.”
“You seem to place the burden on Israelis to prove that Hamas committed mass rape (do you want them to upload photos of dead women’s crotches?) but also the burden on the IDF to prove they haven’t committed mass sexual assault against Palestinians instead of on the Palestinians to provide proof.”
“The founder of ZAKA (one of Israel’s main search and rescue organizations) was likely a pedophile, therefore their volunteers are not credible. But that Muhammed took a child bride named Aisha and the founders of queer theory and post-modernism were also pedophiles (or pedophile-sympathizers) does not reflect on the credibility of Muslims or leftist academics.”
“Palestinian trauma explains and excuses atrocities committed by Hamas, but Jewish trauma is irrelevant to atrocities committed by Israelis. You’re not being consistent or intellectually honest.”
He didn’t reply.
“Listen to Palestinian voices,” write the so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists on social media.
But I never see them share the perspectives of people like Mosab Hassan Yousef, the disowned “Son of Hamas” co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. Mosab has said:
“[Hamas] isn’t just a threat against Israel or the Jewish People, it’s a threat against all civilization. If we don’t stop them, bury them in the canals that they have dug themselves, it is going to be a disaster for mankind.”
And regarding his role as a spy for the IDF:
“I was supposed to just continue my ‘friendly’ relationship with monsters … who wanted the children to die on a regular basis only to become wealthy. And only for power.”
Or the story about Dor Shachar (born Aiman Abu Suboh), who fled Gaza at the age of 12 for Israel, where he was adopted by a kind Jewish man and later converted to Judaism:
“They told us in school that Jews have three legs, that they kill children, women, men, and the elderly. That once they were Muslims, but they turned into Jewish infidels, and the biggest commandment is to kill Jews. All the students in the class had to say, ‘In the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of Mohammed of Islam — kill Jews.’
“I refused to accept this.”4
Or this story from The Free Press, about the author’s father (an Imam) being kidnapped by Hamas for refusing to comply with them:
“I know that if Hamas kills my father, they’ll say that the Israeli army did it. But my father was very keen that even if he died, we should make known the despicable demands they made of him. It was his last request to us, literally as he was being carried out of the door, that should he die, we should publicize the real reason for his death, and it is this: He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance, and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”5
Or even this story by Palestinian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:
“Things got much worse after October 7th. Those who claimed to be in solidarity with Gaza didn’t just avoid condemning Hamas’s horrendous attack — they dismissed it, claiming the extent of the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians was being exaggerated, or outright invented. When I tried to argue that we shouldn’t look the other way, they scolded me. Focus on what matters, they told me.”
“That was a turning point for me. I needed to walk away from the pro-Palestine groups that were my community, my second family. Right now, I am not engaged with any of these groups.”
“It often feels like Palestinians have become pawns for activists, our plight making it easier to criticize Israel. But it’s my family in the crosshairs. My brother and surviving family members are still over there, along with many people I grew up with. This is personal to me.”6
“Listen to Palestinians,” the so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists say. “But only the ones who agree with us.”
For years I was a part of Canada’s “Woke” literary scene — known as “CanLit” meaning Canadian Literature — which now significantly skews openly “anti-Zionist.”
The enthusiasm for “anti-Zionism” expressed by so many “CanLit” people I know reminds me of another scandal, from years earlier.
In 2015, Steven Galloway, a popular professor and chair of the creative writing department at the University of British Columbia was put on leave and subsequently fired after he was accused of sexual assault by a former student, despite an internal investigation finding that on a balance of probabilities no assault occurred.
In late 2016, dozens of writers, mostly well-known and successful, signed an open letter out of concern for what they believed was a violation of due process in the university’s handling of the case.
The backlash was swift and furious: signatories of the open letter were harassed and blacklisted. Female signatories were disproportionately targeted for harassment, even though many were survivors of sexual assault themselves.
I watched all this unfold, spoke to many players on both sides. An odd sort of online-based “community” sprung up among the mostly-aspiring and emerging writers who “spoke out” against the open letter. Articles were written, books were published, tee-shirts were printed and sold. There was a sort of venomous glee taken in tearing down famous authors.
The literary scene is very competitive. A significant number of people who get degrees in creative writing never publish a book. It’s the rare author who is able to make a living from writing and working as an editor, publisher, or teacher within the community, and an even rarer one who is able to make a living from writing alone.
As much as I wanted to believe that the people speaking out against the open letter truly cared about sexual assault victims, the careerism and opportunity-seeking were impossible to ignore, as was the delight in destroying the careers of established writers, to “make room” for the “new CanLit.”
Over the years, through a series of court cases, evidence began to emerge that Steven Galloway’s accuser’s story was not credible. The activists who rallied against Galloway and his famous supporters ignored this.
In a way, they had to; after building so much of their friendships, professional connections, and early career on the self-righteous premise that other, more established people were “bad” and deserved to be cancelled because they signed a letter, what would it mean for them to admit that maybe the signatories had a point all along?
I can’t help but get a sense of déjà vu as I watch former CanLit peers and colleagues post their un-fact-checked “anti-Zionist” memes. A cynical part of me wonders if this is at least subconsciously a marketing opportunity, another way of attracting attention for being “good” and “brave” and “speaking out against power” and “on the right side of history”, especially when they organize readings of their own works “for Palestine.” A jumping on the bandwagon of the activism-du-jour.
As with the Galloway scandal, when evidence emerges that contradicts the “Woke” narrative — for example, that fatality statistics for Palestinian women and children were exaggerated by Hamas,7 or that Gaza is not being subjected to famine by Israel8 — there is no acknowledgement of even the possibility of error.
Jewish talent is extraordinary. Jewish people are over-represented in many creative industries, academia, and prestigious careers such as law and medicine. Where competition is fierce, there are obvious benefits of eliminating Jews.
Historically, when Jews have been persecuted, their persecutors have benefitted from seizing Jewish land and wealth, and from career opportunities, including taking over prestigious positions previously occupied by Jews.
If you believe, as many on the left do, that all inequalities of outcome are a result of oppression, antisemitism is an inevitable conclusion.
A couple months ago, a spreadsheet was circulated around the American publishing scene with a list of nearly 200 Jewish authors: “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?”
“Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel.”
— The New York Times9
In recent months, the literary journal “Guernica” un-published an essay by a Left-wing Israeli peace activist recounting her experiences driving Palestinian children to Israel for medical treatment after a mass resignation from their staff.
An Israeli comic book artist was banned from the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival because she previously served in the IDF — despite her vocal activism for peace and support for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Victoria’s Belfry Theatre and Vancouver PUSH Festival cancelled productions of “The Runner,” a play by non-Jewish Canadian playwright Christopher Morris about an Israeli search and rescue volunteer who saves the life of a Palestinian woman.
To any “pro-Palestine” writers and activists reading this, I have to wonder: If you really believe that truth and justice are on your side, then why do you need to silence and censor narratives that don’t perfectly align with yours? Why do you need to stop other people from watching or reading stories that portray Israelis as complex human beings, capable of kindness?
What are you trying to accomplish?
Why is Jewish humanity and creativity such a threat to your “movement”?
Unfortunately, I think among a certain kind of self-righteous personality, it’s much easier to censor, block, and ignore people who contradict their narrative than it is to admit that they might have gotten some things wrong or that some conflicts cannot easily be cast in black versus white, oppressor versus oppressed, good versus evil.
“It was never about Palestinians, or Muslims. Far more Muslims have been killed by Assad, by Saddam, in Pakistan and Yemen and China, than have in Israel. And I — like all the Leftists and Muslims in Western streets protesting against Israel — could not care less. They are just an instrument to sanitize our antisemitism with.”
— Amir Pars, “Confessions of a Former Antisemite”
A White man I have on Facebook posts a Google document with sources “proving” Israeli atrocities and “evil.” (Yes, he frequently uses this word.) Over 90 percent are from social media.
One of my husband’s best friends lost a cousin on October 7th. Someone he thought was a friend implied his cousin deserved to die because he “shouldn’t have been there.” (The cousin was born in Israel.)
“Hopefully Zionism gets the Nazi treatment,” this man told our friend.
He later clarified that he meant that he hoped the world would reject Zionism the way they had rejected Nazism.
Nearly half the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel. Diaspora Jews overwhelmingly support Israel’s right to exist as a country. The Jewish population still hasn’t recovered their pre-Holocaust numbers.
A friend writes on Facebook that she’d donate directly to Hamas if she could. I almost write something in reply, but close my laptop instead.
I don’t know what to say.
Shots are fired at a Jewish schools in Toronto and Montreal. In Vancouver, a synagogue is set on fire. In France, a 12-year-old Jewish girl is gang-raped while her attackers yell antisemitic slurs at her. Antisemitic hate crimes have ballooned by 360 percent in the United States since October 7th. In Canada, more than half of hate crimes are targeted at Jewish people, who are less than 1.5 percent of the country’s population.
As I write this, my brother shares stories of Jewish friends and colleagues who have cancelled trips for business and to visit family because they were too afraid to go to cities such as New York.
When “Jesus was Palestinian” memes circulated in December, I wondered if to a lot of people, the only “good” Jew was one who allowed him or herself to be brutally murdered. As the title of Dara Horn’s essay collection goes, “People Love Dead Jews.”
Good Jews don’t fight back.
I read an article from Pat Johnson, another Vancouver writer featured on Future of Jewish, describing Jewish people learning to shoot guns and taking courses in wilderness survival.
I see a post on Substack by an anonymous Catholic woman who says she wrote to a local synagogue to offer shelter to a Jewish family if needed. I half-joking ask my mother if she’d help my family hide if it came down to it.
She answered, solemnly: “Of course.”
A few days later, my Lebanese friend gifted my family some homemade turmeric bread and ghee — ostensibly because of my pregnancy, but I suspected her kindness had as much to do with our conversation.
Days earlier, my friend had closed by saying that while she “hated” Hamas, she felt that the Israeli government and the IDF had “gone too far.”
I didn’t disagree with her. I don’t know what “too far” is; I can’t help but think, if it was my daughter among the hostages, possibly being raped and tortured, if she were one of the women brutalized and murdered, would there be such a thing as “too far”? I would be insane with grief and rage.
“Hamas is not going to surrender, and it is immoral beyond words to expect Israel to face extinction to protect the children of Gaza. No other group on earth, other than Jews, would be expected to face extinction to protect other people’s children.”
— Holly MathNerd, “Six Months Into War Against Hamas”
But at the same time, I’m scared that Hamas has put Israel in an impossible situation because of their blatant use of civilians and children as human shields. I don’t think the vast majority of Israelis, including government officials and the IDF leadership, wish to commit a genocide.
But what if that’s what Hamas wants? To sacrifice the Palestinian people to ruin the reputation of Jewish people worldwide, and, even more cruelly, to irrevocably damage the Jewish soul.
My husband tells me that many Orthodox Jews believe that the Jewish people weren’t supposed to return to Israel until the Messianic Age. He follows the interpretation that the Messianic Age is a metaphor for awakening, widespread spiritual enlightenment.
Was the founding of Israel a mistake? Does it matter? It exists now. Over 9.5 million people live there, including 7.2 million Jews and 1.7 Muslims.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
— former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, “A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography”
My friend looked at me sadly, saying: “We just want the killing to stop.”
I don’t want Palestinian children to die any more than I want Israeli children to die. I don’t want Palestinian families decimated. But I’m also inclined to blame Hamas for the deaths of innocent Palestinians more than the Israeli government or the IDF.
“Me too,” I said. “I think that’s what most people want.”
Muhammed’s Jewish wives were beautiful captives taken after his army slaughtered their families and husbands, but that was fairly typical behavior of the era, and Muhammed reportedly treated them well.
Nearly all diaspora Iranians do not like the Iranian government, and many have joined anti-Hamas protests across the globe, including in Canada (and Vancouver), in acts of solidarity with Israel and the Jewish People.
He was unable to provide good evidence of the systemic rape by the IDF; however, I have little doubt that some rogue members of the IDF have done appalling things, as it would be a rare army to be entirely free of predators and jackasses.
“A Young Palestinian Who Found Refuge in Israel.” The Epoch Times.
“Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet.” The Free Press.
“Israel Killed 31 of My Family Members in Gaza. The Pro-Palestine Movement Isn’t Helping.” The Free Press.
“Duh, Of Course Hamas Lied About Casualty Statistics.” Growing to Truth.
“I read the new ‘Gaza famine report’ so you don’t have to.” The Times of Israel.
“A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing.” The New York Times.
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Great essay. Unfortunately, most diaspora Jews were, and are still, unprepared for living in a post Oct. 7th world.
I understand and appreciate your thought process when discussing if Israel has gone too far in the war. However, I think it’s unfair for people not in Israel to have an opinion on that. They are fighting truly existential threat and they are for their ability to exist and live. Israel cannot afford to lose even one war in the neighbourhood they’re in.
No other country in the world would be as restrained in their response as Israel has given their capabilities and the severity of the attacks against them. The world seems to be pushing Israel into an impossible situation by not putting international pressure on Hamas on surrender and it turns my stomach daily.
This is a very heartfelt post. It is not an easy time right now. Hopefully, on the other side there will be a way forward that will bring understanding and peace.
Just as an aside, your friend got the idea that the IDF raped Palestinian women from a reporter for Al Jazeera. It went viral in the Muslim world. Israel, and the US demanded information so they could find the culprits and prosecute them. The reporter had to backtrack and said she lied about the entire thing. If you notice she claimed Israel had done to Palestinians in the Shifa hospital what hamas had actually done to the people in ISrael when they attacked. She said that she wanted to rile up the populace so they would fight back against the IDF. Meanwhile, the story quietly disappeared from the al Jazeera website and other postings, except I am sure that there is screenshot somewhere saved by an antisemite. https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/al-jazeera-quietly-deletes-story-falsely-alleging-idf-raped-palestinians-in-gaza-hospital/
Israel, like the US , has very strict rules of engagement and brokers no nonsense when it comes to how to treat civilians.