MV For Palestine

A Middle Finger Is Not an Argument

The following is a letter to editor of the MV Times that the editor declined to publish. So we present it here instead.

To the Editor:

As one of the protestors referred to in your shamefully uncritical and fawning article about Lior Raz and the Jewish Cultural Festival held on July 27, I would like to bring a few points to your readers’ attention.

Both Chabad and Raz embody the supremacist ideology known as Zionism, which holds that the Palestinian people have no right to their own homeland and must be forcibly removed. The Israeli state and its military instrument, the IDF, have been carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people – a judgment reached by the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars and every major human rights organization on the planet.

The historical facts of the Nakba and occupation as well as the recent war of extermination are abundantly documented, and not controversial; only Zionists contest them. The conduct of Israel itself is responsible for the recent collapse in support for Israel among the American public. To speak euphemistically of “the complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict” is not just obfuscation; it is either woefully ignorant or simply dishonest.

Raz, a self-proclaimed Zionist and former IDF commando, is the co-creator of and stars in the TV series Fauda, which discerning viewers recognize as pernicious Zionist propaganda wrapped up in slick, marketable packaging. Even Itzik Cohen, one of the show’s own actors, has publicly praised Fauda as “the best propaganda broadcast for the State of Israel.”

Consider Raz’s own words, as quoted in your article: following the October 7 attack, “you see how vicious [the Palestinians] are, and how it’s going to be very hard to have peace.” In other words, expel, dispossess, massacre, incarcerate, torture, bomb, humiliate, provoke and brutalize people for over 75 years, and then, when they have exhausted every possible avenue of redress and retaliate with violence, it is they who are vicious and obstacles to peace. This is the very height of Zionist hypocrisy.

Our signs and our message were unambiguous: we support the celebration of Jewish culture, and we deplore Chabad’s decision to celebrate Raz as though he were a hero. The good news is that we succeeded in getting our message across to Lior Raz. He himself approached and cursed us. Then, according to your report, he also encouraged the audience to give us the finger. This is instructive: Raz and his fellow ideologues have no better argument than the middle finger.

And yet, some of the attendees at the Festival gave us thumbs up as they passed by us. Not everyone drinks the Kool-Aid.

David Mintz
Oak Bluffs