Following Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s recent congressional testimony, Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School, resigned from Harvard’s anti-semitism advisory committee and offered a “Hanukkah” message that in part read:
“Ignoring Jewish suffering is evil. Belittling or denying the Jewish experience, including unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe. Denying Israel the self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.”
Not instead, but in addition, Wolpe might have recognized that ignoring Palestinian suffering is evil. Belittling or denying the Palestinian experience, including unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe. Denying Palestinians the self-determination as a nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.
Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) are no less human than Jews. They also deserve respect for their lives, dignity, rights, self-determination and nationhood. To deny or ignore these realities is evil, too.
Leslie Sponsel
Hawaii Kai
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