A good family friend recently asked me if I thought their activism for the people of Gaza was an expression of anti-semitism.

My answer was an unequivocal “no, it is not.”

As someone who grew up in a country where they were frequently menaced with racist epithets and threats, they found it hard to understand, they said, that people level accusations of anti-semitism at them for their advocacy.

It’s still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that we need to be having conversations like that… that we need to have the courage to have conversations like that. But there’s no doubt that we do. And I understand the historical and present reasons why.

There is no “but…” in answering these questions. The Israeli aggression in Gaza is a horrific and morally indefensible human tragedy. And the Israeli military’s efforts to “destroy” Hamas have not achieved the two purported goals of the country’s government: hostages are still in Hamas’ control and Israelis don’t feel more safe. From everything I read, it seems that most Israelis, including high-ranking officials, disagree with their government’s war policies. In fact, the Israeli government’s policies have made Jews across the world less safe, just as we saw in Colorado this week, in Washington just a week or so ago, and in Pennsylvania during the Passover.

It was heart-wrenching for our family to read the news about the attack in Boulder. I have a longtime client there and Tracie and I have spent a lot of time walking the Pearl St. Mall where the violence took place. We know scores of Jews in that community. We are praying for them.

The people who were attacked in Colorado were merely expressing their solidarity with the hostages and their families. The couple slain in D.C. was simply attended a “mixer” with no political agenda. The family in Pennsylvania had innocently sat down to a holiday meal.

Pro-Palestinian advocacy is not wrong. And it’s not anti-semitism. Violence is wrong. We all must stand up to protect one another from violence both verbal and physical. The attacks on Jews will stop only when we rise up as a community against them.