I am adding links to references for this essay. I am not finished but will continue to add links as I am able.
I am trying so hard to write with love and understanding but I am demoralized and enraged. As a white, non-religious, queer, autistic lactation consultant who lives on Turtle Island, I have been witnessing the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government with the support of the U.S. government on the people of Palestine, with horror over my own complicity and culpability. I am appalled that many of you believe in Israel’s right to exist and defend itself when it is actively and openly perpetrating a genocide. How does any state have a “right to exist”? Only people have the right to exist. Why don’t Palestinians have the right to exist and defend themselves?
Jewish people have the unalienable right to exist. But the lie that Jewish people require a Jewish state for safety harms Jewish people and makes them less safe. It is incontestable that Jewish people have experienced historical atrocities and current ongoing antisemitism. But calling out the Israeli genocide of Palestinian people is not antisemitism. Some of my Jewish colleagues are attempting to shut down discourse of Israeli genocidal actions with accusations of blood libel. I had to look up this term. I am disgusted that blood libel has been used against Jewish people to promote antisemitism. I am so sorry. But your attestations in this instance are careless and lazy and wrong.
Calling out the Israeli government for their genocide of the Palestinian people is not blood libel. The Israeli military does intentionally kill babies and children and adults, not for their blood, but to erase Palestinians. The Israeli government, themselves, claim that no Palestinian is innocent, and that even the children must be exterminated. They blame Hamas, whom the Israeli government funded and established as the only resistance force in Palestine. Every accusation made by the Israeli government against Hamas is a confession of their own brutal actions. Even Israeli soldiers confirm Israeli military atrocities. Should the Palestinians agree to lie down and die or do they have a right to resist murder and forced displacement?
I am trying to understand how some Jewish people I admire for their kindness and lactation expertise can support such atrocities and joyously celebrate the terrorism of Israel and their benefactors in the U.S. I have come to believe you are biased by your own trauma. My understanding is that many Jewish people receive education in childhood that their very survival requires an Israeli State. You did not deserve this. Your trauma is being exploited by a colonizing force.
I have read one pro-Palestinian Jewish individual’s account of summer camps where Jewish children are exposed to activities where they must endure camp counselors assaulting and terrorizing them on their “journey” to find their way to Israel (a location at the camp) to be safe. Along the way they are yelled at, forced to perform physical feats of strength, and frightened until they make it to “safety.” This indoctrination of a lack of safety is a common experience in Jewish childhood education. Real Jewish trauma is weaponized to make Jewish children feel unsafe. Traumatized Jewish children grow into adults who may be oblivious to Israeli atrocity. But adults are responsible for recognizing their own trauma and not perpetuating it on others.
Israel does not = Judaism. Operationally, Israel is an illegal, racist, colonial project. Judaism is a religion. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian people lived together in peace in Palestine for generations until the Nakba in 1948 when the Israeli government claimed this land and forced Palestinians to leave. Yes, there are accounts of atrocities against and displacement of Jewish people in the 1500s. This does not give modern day European Jewish people the right to steal land from Indigenous Palestinians whose families lived on their land for centuries. You cannot point to land theft in the 14th century to justify land theft, forced displacement, and murder in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Nakba forced Palestinians from their land owned by generations, killed 15,000, and displaced approximately 750,000 Palestinians. Palestinians in the diaspora still have keys to their own homes that are occupied by Israeli settlers. There are currently living displaced Palestinians from the Nakba. Israeli settlers are still stealing land from Palestinians, right now, today during a genocide. Imagine waking up and finding that an official has “given ownership” of your land to a colonizer and you are forced by authorities to leave your ancestral home. This happens daily in Palestine. If you are Indigenous to Turtle Island, you don’t even have to imagine, as this is also your history.
Palestinians have been living under apartheid since the Nakba in 1948. They do not have the same rights as Jewish citizens. Many Palestinian birthing people give birth at checkpoints in apartheid Israel because they are prevented from timely travel to hospitals by Israeli government officials. They are not allowed to travel freely through their own country. This is femicide and infanticide as well as apartheid. This was occurring decades before October 7.
Palestinian lactating parents and their infants are starving due to lack of nutrition. Starving parents are unable to fully sustain breast/chestfeeding. Commercial milk formula is unavailable in hospitals or homes to feed the babies who have no access to human milk. This is not a natural disaster. It is a deliberate and diabolical withholding of food from Palestinian people. This is happening while aid trucks, which are blocked by Israeli military, have food ready for delivery just a few miles away. Food that could sustain birthing parents so that they can provide human milk for their babies. Commercial milk formula for those infants in NICUs who do not have access to human milk.
Babies are starving to death while people debate the value of their lives. As supporters of birthing and lactating people, we are obligated to denounce this. Our counterparts in Gaza are crying out to us to help them access food to feed birthing parents so they can feed their babies. My colleagues, where is your moral outrage? How are you not standing up for Palestinians every single day? In every way you can? Some of you speak up for queer people and Black people and Brown people and immigrants and Indigenous people of Turtle Island but most fall silent for Palestinians. You wrap yourselves in your ostentatious progressive righteousness as long as it is socially and fiscally acceptable. You know this is wrong, but you place your own livelihood above your morality. Gross. Shame! Speak up. Your silence is complicity. Every voice can make a difference. It is almost too late.
The Israeli government has destroyed hospitals, homes, and schools, has intentionally targeted journalists and health care workers, has deliberately killed innocent civilians, has taken Palestinians hostage for decades, and has kept aid from reaching starving Palestinians. There is no justification for this. This is ethnic cleansing. This is genocide. This is evil. There are no words to fully describe this horror. Please colleagues, reevaluate your rhetoric or your silence and wake up to the actual circumstances. Find your moral courage. Let us all work together to feed all of the babies. Now.
Free Palestine, love the Jewish people, fuck colonialism, fuck Israeli government apartheid and genocide, and as always, Free Palestine.
Laura Spitzfaden, BSPH, IBCLC
Feed the Baby LLC
