Passover For Palestinians

Overview

Passover is a major Jewish holiday.  Every year Jews worldwide gather with family and friends to celebrate their freedom from slavery in Egypt. This is believed to have taken place almost 3,500 years ago. Seder dinners on Passover recall the oppression the Jewish people were subjected to by an unrelenting Pharoah. The story, as told in the Haggadah, along with various prayers and songs guide the celebrants through slavery into freedom.  A major part of the story is devoted to Exodus. The numbers vary, but according to biblical studies, 600,000 males left Egypt on foot first, with a total of 2 million people leaving servitude. The Passover story remains a powerful narrative in shaping Jewish consciousness, even though there is no archeological evidence to support it after decades of research.  

Children play an important role in the celebration. We are asked to look at the story through the eyes of the young. Along with four questions about the Seder activities, we are asked to reflect on four very different children; the Wise Child, the Wicked Child, the Simple Child, and the One Who Doesn’t Know How To Ask. The Haggadah begins by stating, “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” and in Exodus, a pivotal part of the story,  “You shall not wrong nor oppress a stranger for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt”(Exodus 22:20). While it is tempting to believe that these are isolated statements, and sentiments, protecting strangers appears over 36 times in the Torah, and compassion for others over 115 times.  Even the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Torah reportedly written many years before Christ, states unequivocally “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). 

The Haggadah, nor Torah, for that matter, do not say that we as Jews are free to pick and choose our neighbors and our behavior toward them. If our neighbors are Arabs, or Palestinians, for example, we are not free to hate them or kill them at will. There is no relativism when it comes to taboos on killing neighbors, at least in theory. 

Through the Eyes Of Children

I belong to Doctors Against Genocide, a group comprised of medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and writers who work and/or address issues in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and West Bank. They offer live medical-oriented programs that cover conditions on the ground from hospitals, clinics, and offices, on Zoom each Sunday. Their reporting is exceptionally detailed. 

Last Sunday’s program was dedicated to the plight of Palestinian children under Israeli siege. Israel, and IDF in particular, have killed approximately 17,000 children, injured over 39,000, killed 17,000 of both parents of children, caused 1 million children to go hungry by blocking the delivery of food, caused 16,000 children to suffer from acute malnutrition—near death, 4,000 reported with amputations and lost limbs, 1,055 held in detention with no representation, 85 percent of whom report being beaten or tortured. On average, 160 children are killed by the IDF daily.

The IDF has strategically bombed hospitals, cut off ambulance services, and shot medical personnel in the act of helping victims. They have, on multiple occasions, blocked access to wounded children and let them bleed to death. Many of these acts have been captured on mobile phones, yet no legal action has been taken. 

The suffering of thousands of Palestinian children is so severe that doctors note that the nomenclature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) doesn’t apply; in fact, it is misleading. These children live in tent cities and dense urban areas under constant bombing. They feel existentially threatened every minute of their lives, night and day. They are reported to shake to sleep, scream at night, and have no protection.

The IDF also conducts night raids, taking kids from their beds, hooding them, cinching their hands, abducting them, and taking them to jail. They do this in order to use children to rat on their parents. This is common practice. Over the last 7 years, an estimated 10,000 children have been “hooded.” The long term effects of hooding are unknown. 

In recent research, reported in Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, the above data is not only supported but amplified. The death toll of Palestinians, due to traumatic injury, was raised to 64,260, 59% women, children and people over 65 years (October 26, 2025).  Lancet pointed out that Israel has turned Gaza into a giant graveyard, with over 60 percent of infrastructure destroyed and over 40,000 bomb craters. Israel has bombed over 80 percent of schools in Gaza, resulting in over 600,000 Palestinian children losing their education for 1.5 years. Israelis have bombed hospitals, and clinics to the point where one hospital remains, half functioning.

The reason that the cause of death is listed as traumatic injury is because the bombs used by Israel, MK 80, pulverize any living being by impact of shockwaves within a 400 yard radius—four football fields. It blows through 17 inches of concrete. The IDF orchestrates the dropping of MK 80’s in high density, populated areas. They know the density calculations explicitly. The MK 80’s were first developed by the U.S. and used in the Vietnam War. Their destructive power is proven. 

International Law

Doctors Against Genocide points to a breakdown in international law—and humanity– whereby Israel and the IDF are free to do whatever they want to Palestinian children and others—-60% of victims are civilian women. Recently, they have reported sniper kills of Palestinian children, and snipers are accurate to 1,000 yards. Snipers know they are killing children, yet they act with impunity. Israelis seem unable to hear the cry of one child, who in the middle of a pile of bombed rubble is reported to have said, “We want to live; we want medicine; we want to live as other children, please”.

Israel’s official response to international protest and “data” have been to state that, “No other army in the world has taken such wide ranging measures to protect civilians.” It has never occurred to them that their “efforts” aren’t working, unless they are working by design and denial. Israel has broken scores of UN laws governing war and human rights violations. It accuses the UN of ‘antisemitism’, a familiar trope; the same UN that arranged for the founding of the state of  Israel. 

It seems that revenge has captured the Israeli mainstream, and empowered Israelis—religious and secular– to support killing with no guilt. The events of October 7^th, when Hamas invaded Israel, have normalized killing with self-justification. 

The Passover Dilemma

This Passover, I have had to remind myself that I am Jewish, not Israeli. Jews were around thousands of years prior to the state of Israel. Israel is a terrorist, client state of the U.S. Without the U.S. there is no Israel. The U.S. funds its weapons, its stock market, and its economy in general. We guarantee their debt by shipping them weapons in spite of monies owed to the U.S. I deplore the fact that my tax dollars are being used to murder civilians and children. If the U.S. wants to lower its  budget deficit, start by cutting off funding to Israel, and demand that it repay aid and debts of over $350 billion, and $40 billion in recent weapon sales, now. 

Furthermore, Israel is not my ‘homeland’, in spite of the careless thinking that because I am Jewish that I ipso facto support Israel. Israel is a killing machine. Its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has a warrant out for his arrest for crimes against humanity issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Hague. His response is “The court is antisemitic.” His defiance of the court is supported by the U.S., who, together, have intimidated judges and threatened the international court’s funding. Israel has even used Mossad, its intelligence agency, to intimate judges at the ICJ. 

The same antisemitic trope is used to block university students and professors worldwide from speaking out against Israel and in favor of Palestinians. Almost all protests are reframed by those in positions of power as ‘pro-Hamas’, and by association terrorists. The US and Israel terrorize those who oppose them on any scale, jail, beatings, deportations, blacklisting and disappearing into prisons in the center of Israel or El Salvador, have become commonplace. It is ideologically motivated, brutal and illegal.   

I invite all Palestinians, including friends in our Palestinian Peace Group here in Medellin to join us in celebrating Passover. We will agree, in advance, to celebrate tolerance, love of our neighbors, and our mutual desire to be free from the oppression of Israel. Freedom from Israel’s behavior is stated clearly in the ethical guidelines set out in our Haggadah. Let’s celebrate what is possible  and justified as we protest for civil liberties and change.