MV For Palestine

David Mintz, a founding member of MV For Palestine, submitted the following Letter to the Editor of the MV Times in August, 2025. When the MV Times did not respond, he followed up. They then said they would try to "find a home for [the letter]"; subsequently said they would publish it; did not publish it in the following weeks; did not respond to email inquiries as to the final disposition of this LTE. Since the MV Times has evidently declined the letter, we publish it here instead.

Broitmann’s misleading op-ed is too little, too late

Rabbi Caryn Broitmann’s op-ed of August 1, 2025 characterizes the current famine in Gaza as a human-created emergency for which the responsibility lies with the Israeli government, and she calls on Jews to set aside their differences and work together to save lives. This qualified recognition of the catastrophic situation, though welcome, is accompanied by familiar distortions and falsifications of the historical record.

Broitmann blames Hamas for “starting this latest cycle of violence” on October 7. One must be either disingenuous or historically illiterate to suggest that history began on that date, with the implication that hitherto everything was fine until Hamas broke the peace. Hamas is almost certainly guilty of war crimes, having abducted and murdered civilians. History teaches, however, that violent uprisings do not happen in a vacuum. Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion, in which slaves rose up and murdered dozens of their enslavers, was the direct consequence of the slavocracy itself. Occasionally, you do reap what you sow. The historical record on Israel-Palestine is likewise uncontroversial: ethnic cleansing, violence, apartheid and oppression against Palestinians have been Israeli policy for decades. It is misleading to imply that blame for the horror lies only with the current Israeli leaders, and demonstrably false to say that Israel has cut off food, electricity, and medicines for no more than “almost three months.”

Broitmann also refers to Hamas’ use of “sexual violence as a tool of war.” The problem with these allegations is that no evidence has been produced to substantiate them. A UN inquiry reported that Israeli authorities withheld key evidence of mass rape that they claimed to have. These unsubstantiated allegations of mass rape (and of baby beheadings) are atrocity propaganda designed to distract from – or worse, justify – Israeli war crimes.

The rabbi’s innocuous-sounding description of Zionism is misleading. The negative connotations that the term carries are well-founded. Although it emerged as a reaction to genuine antisemitic persecution, the Zionist movement since its inception has had colonization of Palestine as its explicit goal. Self- determination is great, but forced displacement, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing are not. She encourages readers to join Jewish organizations advocating humanitarian relief, but only those within the liberal Zionist comfort zone — notably omitting the unabashedly anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the largest Jewish groups calling for an end to the occupation, and for equality and freedom for all throughout Palestine and Israel.

Not least important is what Rabbi Broitmann does not say: genocide. The Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people, live-streamed to the entire world, has horrified and outraged millions of people, and expert legal opinion is clear. There is no serious debate about whether this is genocide, and there can be no justification. Moral courage requires us all, especially people in positions of leadership, to call it what it is, and to call on the US government to stop sponsoring genocide.

David Mintz
Oak Bluffs