“Pretending the Jewish community is a monolith or members trying to act in the name of all Jews is … I don’t think helpful or appropriate right now, especially as people are still grieving, dealing with a lot of emotions and feelings and thoughts about what happened in Israel and what’s still happening in Gaza,” said one Jewish staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “To me it feels inappropriate to pretend that supporting billions of dollars for open-ended weapons sales is Jewish.”
The staffer was one of the over 400 Muslim and Jewish staffers on the Hill behind an October 19 open letter calling for a cease-fire. (The offices of Jacobs, Schakowsky, Raskin, Schumer, and Cardin did not offer comment on the letter or on the idea of a cease-fire more generally.) “Cease-fire now” was also the demand of a protest a day earlier on Capitol Hill that was led by two leftist Jewish groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.
“Many have asked me ‘who is Jewish Voice for Peace?’” Representative Jerry Nadler tweeted that day. “Their website says they are ‘proud to be a part of the global, Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,’ which, by its founder’s admission & tenets, seeks to end Israel as a Jewish & democratic state.” Nadler had previously, on Instagram, implored his colleagues to consider not extremes or slogans but what he called the American Jewish “mainstream.” (In fairness, Raskin came out to defend the protesters against comparisons to the January 6 insurrectionists.)