You can’t be ashamed of Israel and still be my friend.

I lost many Jewish friends since October 7th — not to death, but to indifference. They fight for everyone, except their own people.

“Anti-Zionist” Jews at their finest (photo: Nikolas Gannon/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay written by Giulia Boukhobza, who was born and raised in Libya, until her family's escape in 1967. She has written and spoken widely about Jewish refugees from the Arab world. She lives with her family in the United States.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I was hoping this moment would never arrive.

We have been friends for almost 40 years. We have sent our kids to the same schools, and, for a while, we went to the same synagogues.

And this is why it makes it all the more difficult, but I need to break our relationship. I need to say goodbye for once and for all. I owe it to myself, to my Jewish brothers and sisters, to Israel, and to all those before us that sacrificed for Israel and for the Jews.

And to those that are now, fiercely and desperately and proudly, holding on to this Jewish chain that the world has tried to destroy for millennia. But so far, thankfully, with no success, yet, alas, at such high cost.

Lately, the world seems to have fallen on its head, enshrouded in moral inversion or, at best, moral fog. Since October 7th, we Jews are becoming more and more isolated, as Israel defends itself against genocidal jihadism. Sometimes, I feel like so many know-nothings are pointing their fingers at us nonstop while raging “guilty,” “guilty,” “guilty.”

As a result, I feel a 24/7 need to be surrounded by fellow Jews who share my pain, fear, anger, sadness, and horror for what the Israeli hostages endured, and are still enduring, and what Israel as a nation is confronting.

But I realize that’s not you. Being born a Jew and feeling like a Jew are obviously not the same. After four decades of friendship, I have to accept that we aren’t on the same path, not even close. Maybe it wasn’t likely in the first place. You grew up in the safety of the United States. I grew up as a targeted Jew in an Arab country.

You do not care one whit about Israel, the only country we have as a people. To the contrary, since October 7th, you seem endlessly embarrassed, discomfited by it. How painful to witness!

You have never even asked how my two sisters and dozens of nephews and nieces who live in Israel are doing. In all the times we met since October 7th, I always felt I couldn’t even tell you that the two Bibas children and their mother, all brutally kidnapped and murdered, were related to me through my cousin’s marriage. You did not want to get involved. You only wanted to run for the hills and distance yourself from all this.

I have known you to be a self-described feminist all your life. Yet you somehow managed never to mention the gang rapes and body mutilations that our Israeli sisters suffered at the hands of the Palestinian terrorists. Total silence.

Nonetheless, you always seem to worry about any alleged indignity against any other minority in the world, except, that is, for your own people, your own tribe.

After October 7th, I felt that by the time I finished crying for any Israeli soldier who died in battle, we in the U.S. lost another Jew. But not to death, rather, like you, to indifference, hubris, desire to belong to anything but one’s own group, and, mostly, flat-out ignorance.

You never took the time to learn, study, visit, and understand the history of our one and only country, Israel, much less the miracle of its modern rebirth. You never tried to understand the meaning, virulence, tenacity, shape-shifting nature of antisemitism, but became a virtual PhD when it came to racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia.

At this stage, I am not trying to convince you. Too late in the day. Too little time. Too many battle fronts to face. Too much stress on the emotional circuitry. But, since our relationship goes back 40 years, let me share a few parting thoughts.

I look at what is now happening in the U.S. and, of course, in Israel not as localized issues, but as part of a global phenomenon. I follow closely Italian, French, and British news, and I have family in those places. Shocking how few otherwise well-educated Americans are following, let alone learning from, all the mistakes that Western Europe made and that is now bringing it to its knees, as political Islam makes one inroad after another. And Australia and Canada are not far behind.

How long before polygamy will be allowed as a concession to “cultural relativism,” or marriage to 9-year-old girls, or blasphemy laws to criminalize criticism of Islam? The handwriting is already on the wall in places like the United Kingdom.

We in the U.S. have to understand and fight the danger of extreme Islamist ideas that have penetrated our K-12 schools, universities, businesses, and yes, even some of our political institutions. America is the ultimate target. We dare not let them win, or it will be the death knell for liberal democracy.

As a nation, we have been largely sleep walking, and so busy being proud of our open minds, presumed virtues, political correctness, and wokeness that we are barely attuned to all that is now happening around us. For example, you’ve tried to explain why we need to defend each case of a pro-Hamas overseas student at risk of being deported. Funny how you never seemed to worry about Jews being harassed and menaced by these very same students since October 7th.

I’ve tried to explain to you the damage these students have done to our universities, and how I feel as a mother and a Jew seeing our young Jewish students scared of going to universities because of fear of these pro-Hamas “students.” You looked at me in horror when I told you that, as far as I am concerned, these pro-terrorists students should have been deported yesterday!

You look at these cases as “free speech" issues. Sorry, they’re not. But, heaven forbid, you would ever find yourself on the same side as a Republican administration. Better Hamas or Hezbollah than the party you did not vote for, right?

More often than not, these “innocent students” who are “just” exercising their right of “free speech” are organized and sent to our universities by well-funded, well-organized Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, and their sugar daddies in Qatar, etc.

They are creating turmoil in our country, siding with proscribed groups, harassing Jews, burning American flags, and denouncing Western values, while exploiting those very same values to advance their aims. Sorry, but in my book democracy isn’t a suicide pact. History should have taught us that what starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews. You obviously missed those lessons.

The jihadists’ goal, aided by the useful idiots of the far left and a long-term game plan, is to eventually conquer the West. And they’re not keeping it a secret. Just listen to what they say. Read what they write. Follow the few but brave dissident voices in the Muslim world. They’re putting their lives on the line to warn us. But you are too blind to see it, too deaf to hear it, too close-minded to grasp it, too filled with certitude to imagine it.

And these students encampments, protests, and building takeovers are not happening in a vacuum. The masterminds are well aware of the trusting mindset, naïveté, and gullibility of many Americans, especially young people.

They are manipulating us in a fiendishly brilliant way, using our psychology against us. For starters, we so fear being labeled racist, in this case Islamophobic, that we ignore what stares us in the face and choose silence, if not complicity, as our preferred response.

And this is why, while you profess to be scared stiff of U.S. President Donald Trump and his “destruction of our democracy,” we should be far more scared of these “students” and their laser-focused handlers.

For me, as a Jew and Zionist, what is most disturbing is that I see so many Jews like you who will do anything for any other cause, but cringe when it comes to helping or supporting Jews or Israelis.

And yes, it also helps me understand why, during the Holocaust, so many Jews were shocked when they ended up in concentration camps because they believed they were “the good Jews,” not like “those other Jews.” We were assimilated, they thought, we were just like you non-Jews, we never lifted a finger for other Jews, so how could we end up in Auschwitz or Buchenwald?

Furthermore, my one-time Jewish friend, you’ve tried to convince me (or maybe yourself) that you believe there’s a big difference between antisemitism and “anti-Zionism.”

Since the rebirth of Israel in 1948, you can ask any Jew who was expelled from an Arab or communist country, and they will tell you that, if they were not called “dirty Jew,” they were called “dirty Zionist.” What a great cover to kill more and more Jews. When they don’t feel for whatever reason they can persecute us as Jews, do it as Zionists. A win-win situation for the haters.

As I tried to tell you several times, but with no curiosity on your part, I am one of these Jews. On June 6, 1967, in the early stage of what became known as the Six-Day War, a mob of hundreds of Arab men invaded my home in Tripoli, Libya. They wanted to burn alive my parents and their eight children. I was 16 then and remember every minute of that nightmare, reliving it all too frequently to this day. We were saved only by my mother’s extraordinary courage and instinct.

Other Jews, including good friends of ours, were slaughtered that same day. And what were the frenzied mobs screaming while lighting their matches in order to burn us alive? “You dirty Zionists.”

Libya is far from Israel. We were never even allowed to mention the word Israel, much less visit it. And Jews had lived in Libya for centuries, if not millennia. Long before the Arabs, by the way, who stole — yes, stole — the land from the indigenous Berbers. But who cares about history, right? Facts be damned in our post-truth world. Who’s to say your narrative is more valid than mine?

And this is why, my now ex-friend, hearing you telling me that you think there is a difference between being an antisemite and an anti-Zionist was surprising, even if not terribly shocking. Score another one for the Jew-haters, who managed to sell this lie, assuming Jews like you would buy it.

And, of course, it also makes it oh-so-easy for the Jews who want to distance themselves from Israel to do so when it doesn’t conform to their idea of perfection, and, God forbid, even embarrasses them in front of their non-Jewish friends, who all doubtless come from “perfect ethical countries.” Never mind that Israel is fighting for its very survival against an enemy that weaponizes women and children, and uses hospitals, schools, and mosques as arsenals and command centers.

But for you, as the “good Jew,” groups like Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, media outlets like the New York Times and BBC, and the United Nations can do no wrong, though none have shown an ounce of sympathy for Israel since October 7th.

Indeed, their absence of sympathy only serves to reinforce your own views. After all, if they don’t speak out against hundreds of thousands of Israelis made homeless thanks to constant missile barrages, or even about the “pay for slay” program to reward Palestinian murderers, why should you? Must be either irrelevant or nothing more than “Right-wing Israeli propaganda.”

But, thankfully, history has another unmistakable lesson for us. We will overcome. At the end of the day, Israel will not only survive, but flourish. So, too, the Jewish People. Our best days lie ahead.

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