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‘Not in my name’: Jews against the Gaza war
In Indonesia, which as a Muslim-majority nation naturally stands strongly in support of Palestinian rights and freedoms, there is a tendency to conflate Jewish people and Israelis with the Israeli government.
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Avenue of escape: Displaced Palestinians of the Salman family ride in a vehicle on May 27, 2024, as they prepare to flee Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip following a nearby Israeli strike. (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)
“Isn’t Julia afraid she will get in trouble?” This is a comment I have heard so often, from so many people, since I was a teenager up to now, referring to the critical tone of my writing. Their concern is not unfounded, especially under the New Order regime (1966-1998), when critical voices and dissidents could be blacklisted, taken in for interrogation, tortured or “disappeared”.
But even when people disagree with my views, not once have they ever called me a “self-hating Indonesian”.
So isn’t it strange that Jews who are critical and opposed to the Gaza war, are called “self-hating Jews”?
This was initially brought to my attention by a 27 minute ABC documentary titled Not in My Name about Antony Loewenstein (born 1974), which traces his life from a traditional Jewish upbringing in Australia to becoming an international critic of Zionism and Israel.
Loewenstein, a Jewish Australian-German investigative journalist and filmmaker, is the author of several books, including My Israel Question (2006) and The Palestine Laboratory (2023. See “Pegasus, ‘The Palestine Laboratory’, and our dystopian future”, The Jakarta Post, Oct. 25, 2023).
The attacks on him had started already in 2003 when he published his first major article in The Sydney Morning Herald. He argued that “many of the Israeli government’s actions paralleled apartheid-like policies, that its treatment of Palestinians centre around a racist ideology”.
He wasn’t the first Jewish person to write such things in the mainstream media, but the reaction was explosive. He had touched a raw nerve.
