By Vera Schwartz

A Jewish psychologist in her 80s from Park Avenue West in New York City sent me a video yesterday about the “Hamas resistance fighters” and how “nothing happened in Israel. That we “invented body bags with babies mutilated.” Hearsay…”?!

At Wesleyan, my former university, the first support meeting was to “share feelings about the conflict on both sides.” Two seemingly equal sides? Horror of horrors.

What prevents the liberal Western world to name the evil that wrecked such carnage upon the Jewish people in Israel? Is it raw antisemitism? An unwillingness to name the evil? A lack of lexicon for distinguishing between good and its atrocious opposite?

Evil will come to bite you back. I pray not. But please know that this scarcity of conscience is dooming us all. I just came back from a funeral on Har Hertzel. A lone French soldier—Valentin Eli  Goussiah. Secular friends, secular parents brought over, sisters and fellow soldiers screaming with grief. So did I. My eyes riveted to a fellow fighter brought here by ambulance from his hospital bed. The way we honor heroes! 

If you cannot stand with Israel at this dire hour of need, at least save yourself from believing –and Gd forbid publicizing– deadly lies. 

A former resident of West Hartford, CT, Vera Schwartz now lives in Israel. She is Emerita Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University.