Letters to the Editor: Week of Dec. 19, 2024

Reckless allegations

Editor:
I am a longtime reader of the Tucson Weekly, and have enjoyed Brian Smith’s articles. So, I was quite taken aback when I read his Dec. 5 article, “Cultivating resistance and the butterfly effect” about Mohyeddin Abdulaziz. The article was part one-sided screed by Mr. Smith about the Middle East conflict that contained numerous dangerous falsehoods, and part misleading profile of Mr. Abdulaziz.
Just to be open about who I am: I am an atheist Jew involved in my synagogue choir and men’s club. I work as a juvenile public defender and have done so for the last 25 years. I have also worked hard as a Democratic Party volunteer — phone calling and canvassing in every Democratic presidential campaign since I was 17 years old, and current PC and State Committee person. I have also been active in Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, having been a survivor of a Las Vegas casino shooting in 2007.
In 2018, I started a group with State Rep. Alma Hernandez called Tucson Jews for Justice to encourage the progressive Jewish Community to show up to local events. Our group has been present at rallies and events to support immigrants, the LGBT community, and other progressive issues. Our group was specifically limited to involvement in domestic political issues, and did not take positions on the mid east and Israel.
However, I have personally always been a proud Zionist, which merely means I support the right of the Jewish people to have self-determination, and that Israel has a right to exist.
There has unfortunately been a major rise in antisemitic incidents from both the far right and far left over the last few years. It seems to have intensified since the Oct. 7, 2023, brutal Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, where Palestinians from Hamas systemically murdered and raped hundreds of Jews and others at a music festival and took hostages.
The situation in Israel and Gaza is tragic and very complicated. The Hamas terrorist attack has unfortunately resulted in the further loss of life in both Israel and Gaza.
Mr. Smith’s article is not helpful or enlightening to the situation, casually throwing around dangerous emotionally charged falsehoods that Israel is engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism and a Holocaust without context or explanation. These are the types of false allegations that are likely to fuel further antisemitism.
Unfortunately, I speak from experience on the issue of increased anti Semitism. Last spring, I was parked in Downtown Tucson, and a man came out of a car parked in front of me and knocked on my window. I opened my window, and he started screaming “Free Palestine” in my face repeatedly. He then went to the back of my car, started to peel off my Star of David bumper sticker, and spit on my shirt. The man was arrested and admitted to the charges of assault and criminal damage and had court consequences.
A few weeks later, my wife was leaving home early before me for her job as a school counselor, and she woke me up to let me know somebody had covered my car in graffiti overnight that said, “Free Palestine” The perpetrator of that crime was never found.
Mr. Smith, at one point in the Dec. 5 article, quotes Mr. Abdulaziz as saying he is personally a victim of antisemitism when he is quoted as saying, “We are all victims of antisemitism.”
While there are, unfortunately, hate crimes perpetuated against many groups, only Jewish people are the victims of antisemitism. Mr. Abdulaziz and Mr. Smith seem to be engaging in minimization and erasure of the whole horrible history of hatred and violence against the Jewish people.
Unfortunately, I had some very unpleasant personal dealings with Mr. Abdulaziz in 2018. One incident started because I was involved in an Indivisible Arizona book club, and one of the members asked me to help organize a forum on the First Amendment. Tucson Jews for Justice co-sponsored the event with Indivisible Arizona, and recruited the panelist and got it together, with help from the person heading Indivisible Arizona at the time.
The event was called “Why a Free Press is Essential to Democracy” and was emceed by David Fitzsimmons with panelists Joe Ferguson, Jim Nintzel, Dylan Smith, Caitlin Schmidt, Mari Herreras, Bruce Ash and Steve Kozachik. It was held at the Loft Theatre on Oct. 1, 2018.
In the weeks leading up to the event, Mr. Abdulaziz engaged in a high-pressure campaign for Indivisible Arizona to pull out of the co-sponsorship the event with Tucson Jews for Justice purely because we were a Jewish group. My group and the event had nothing to do with Israel.
I attempted to engage in dialogue with Mr. Abdulaziz, so I met with him, the leader of Indivisible, myself and Councilman Steve Kozachik at the councilman’s office. At this meeting, Mr. Abdulaziz was rude and abrasive, and his voice was constantly raised. Online, there were comments from Mr. Abdulaziz and his group like, “It is a major contradiction and a divisive chauvinistic one if (Jews for Justice’s) position is not for total national liberation for the oppressed Palestinians,” one person wrote on Indivisible’s Facebook page, adding, “While the journalists might be questioned on Monday night, it is Indivisible and Jews for Justice who must now be questioned as to their position on Palestinian liberation and Zionist genocide.”
I had another unpleasant experience with Abdulaziz when some members of Tucson Jews for Justice came to a rally in Downtown Tucson to protest Trump's Mexico Border family separation policy. At this event, Mr. Abdulaziz screamed at us (including a young teenager in our group) about Israel, even though the event had nothing to do with Israel.
So essentially Mr. Abdulaziz position that he has tried to enforce is that Jewish people should not be able to participate in public life unless the first show their “anti-Israel” cards. Many would label that position antisemitic.
Last spring, the group Mr. Abdulaziz leads, the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, tried to pressure the YWCA from holding a Women's leadership Conference at the local Jewish Community Center and picketed at the event.
Magdalena Verdugo, the CEO of the YWCA, wrote an editorial about the incident where she stated: Targeting the Jewish Community Center, isolating our Jewish neighbors, will not bring about peace. ...(and) will only promote more discord, incite more anger and cause harm to our community. His group also promoted an event shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, celebrating the Hamas massacre.
Mr. Abdulaziz states in the article, “The Palestinians after this Holocaust are not getting support like the Jews after the Holocaust.” The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of 6 million European Jews by the Nazi German Regime with the goal of killing every Jewish life. There is no history of the Jews in Germany engaging in the wars and violence that Israel has had to contend with in its 70-year history. While the loss of life in Gaza is tragic, it is a direct result of Israel defending against the Hamas terrorists that embed themselves in the schools and hospitals of Gaza to, admittedly, create maximum civilian casualties.
My wife was close to her grandparents, who were both in Auschwitz and had their families murdered there. They met in a DP camp after where her mother was born. She was quite offended by Mr. Abdulaziz’s Holocaust statements, as I am sure were many others.
Mr. Smith quotes an attorney named Jonathan Kuttab, but fails to mention that Kuttab is an Anti-Zionist Palestinian who advocates for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish homeland. His criticism of Holocaust survivors that they had a “relentless will to secure their own survival, even at the expense of others” re-victimizes those survivors and their descendants. (He apparently doesn’t know they were murdered if they went back to their homes). Additionally, Mr. Kuttab’s historical “facts” about the founding of Israel are so off base that they are farcical.
Edna Friedberg, Ph.D., a historian in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum stated in 2018 that, “At a time when our country needs dialogue more than ever, it is especially dangerous to exploit the memory of the Holocaust as a rhetorical cudgel. We owe the survivors more than that. And we owe ourselves more than that.”
Mr. Smith states in the article that Israel engages in “colonialism by any name.” The reality is that there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years. Most Israelis are descended from people who migrated to the Holy Land from 1881 to 1949. The Palestinians and Arabs countries rejected the UN partition two-state solution in 1948 and instead launched a military campaign to destroy Israel. Israeli leadership has since attempted on numerous occasions to negotiate a two-state peace plan, only always to be rebuffed by Palestinian leadership, who believe not in a two-state peaceful solution, but that "from the river to the sea" all Jews must disappear from Israel.
In the article, Mr. Abdulaziz discusses unfortunate incidents to his family that occurred during the 1967 Six-Day War. He may want to consider the causes of that war. At the time, Gamel Abdar Nasser, head of Egypt, said, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight,” ...We will not accept any...coexistence with Israel. Arab forces mobilized and ringed Israel prior to the start of the war. Israel was fighting for its very survival.
Mr. Smith also makes the false accusation that Israel engages in ethnic cleansing. which accuses Israel of systematically working to rid its territory of Palestinians, including Israeli Arab citizens.
While there may be extremists in Israel who voice kooky fantasies, there has been no action to exterminate or expel the Palestinian population from those areas. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the population growth rate for Gaza in 2024 is expected to grow by 1%. Population growth is hardly consistent with ethnic cleansing.
As far as the genocide allegation against Israel made by Mr. Smith: Genocide” refers to the physical destruction of an entire group in whole or in part that has been targeted because of its identity. Israel is engaged in a military campaign to defend against the Palestinian Hamas terrorist that invaded Israel on 10/7 and have vowed to do it again "over and over” Hamas continues to violently battle Israel, and holds Israel hostages seized on Oct. 7. According to John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in history. This includes calling, texting and dropping leaflets giving instructions to civilians to evacuate to safety.
Nobody likes war, and it would be great if we lived in a world where it was gone forever. But Israel does not live in that world. While there may be an argument as to the proper tactics the Israel government has taken since Oct. 7, Israel has a fundamental right to defend itself. The article by Mr. Smith about Mr. Abdulaziz does nothing to help the current situation, but instead inflames already existing tensions. More importantly, the article states dangerous, reckless allegations against Israel as fact, but provides no solutions.

- Anthony Zinman