In July 1919, my mother’s family fled from a murderous antisemitic pogrom in Lysianka, Ukraine, a small town about 90 miles south of Kiev. They wandered through Poland for years until they managed to make it to Ellis Island in early 1923. They were among the fortunate ones who escaped. The chaotic collapse of the Russian Empire unleashed a torrent of antisemitic violence in Ukraine between 1918-1921: the mass murder of over 100,000 Jews (a number exceeded only by the Shoah), many thousands of Jewish women and girls raped, and some 300,000 children orphaned. About one-half of Jewish homes and two-thirds of Jewish businesses in the region were looted or destroyed. The perpetrators, who blamed Jews for the downfall of the czar, included military elite Cossacks, White Army forces battling with Bolsheviks, the Ukrainian National Army, and local peasants. There had been earlier cycles of antisemitic pogroms in the Russian Empire, but the events of 1918-21 were uniquely ferocious in the number of victims and the level of cruelty.
Like many Jews today, I see an uncomfortable parallel with the current Israeli policy on the West Bank. To be sure, the scale of the suffering endured today by Palestinians there does not approach the level of what happened in blood-soaked Ukraine. Yet militant Israeli settlers, with the encouragement and support of the current government, seek nothing less than ethnic cleansing in the name of a Biblical “Eretz Israel.” Organized attacks and violence aimed at Palestinian communities and families, often protected by the Israeli army, have become more frequent in recent months. And now, more and more voices in Israel and the United States have begun to question and protest what appears to be a betrayal of fundamental Jewish values and Jewish history. We ask, how can it be that the Jewish state — and perhaps a majority of Israeli citizens — now support modern pogroms against Palestinians on the West Bank?
Attacks on Palestinian businesses, land, and homes have occurred over the past three years but they have become more frequent and violent in recent months. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded more than 1,330 settler-related attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank from January to late July, averaging six a day and marking the fastest pace since the agency began systematic tracking two decades ago. Israeli settlers typically set up tents near Palestinian homes and cut off access to essentials like water. Israeli soldiers arrive not to stop settlers’ illegal activity but to arrest Palestinian families for their own “protection.” A spokesperson for B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, observes, “Settler violence has become more violent, more systematic and, most importantly, part of a state mechanism intended to ethnically cleanse large parts of the West Bank. The government funds and arms the settlers while the Israeli military stands by and, in many cases, actively participates in the attacks.”
Lehava, one of Israel’s largest extremist settler groups with an estimated membership of over 100,000, openly advocates for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land. Lehava is closely associated with Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, with significant crossover between members of his far-right party and the settlers. This Jewish supremacist version of Zionism has moved from the fringes of Israeli politics to the very center of its policymaking.
When we hear American politicians, as well as leaders in the Jewish community, routinely declare their “support for Israel” or defend “Israel’s right to exist,” we must ask: Does that support include the current pogroms on the West Bank? Do they support Israel’s “existence” as a democratic homeland for Jews or as an occupying, colonial power?
Today, younger Jews in particular increasingly reject blind backing for the Jewish state. American Jews, many of us descendants of refugees from long-ago pogroms, need to challenge the morality of and need for the current Israeli pogroms taking place on the West Bank. Jewish supremacism must not replace the alternative Jewish tradition of universal rights for all. There can be no peace or security for Israel until there is a just resolution of the Palestinian cause. Stopping the current campaign to expel Palestinians from their homes on the West Bank would be a crucial and just first step.
Daniel Czitrom is an emeritus professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. His new
historical memoir, “Kitchen Table History: Contending With My Family’s Radical Past,” will be published in January by the University of Illinois Press. He can be reached at
dczitrom@mtholyoke.edu.