Family arguments are as much of a Thanksgiving tradition as the food itself, and there’s a good chance that canned cranberry sauce won’t be the most polarizing topic this year. Inevitably, anyone gathering with friends and family this week has a good chance of finding themselves in a conversation about Israel, Hamas, and the approximately 10,000 people who’ve died over the last 46 days.
“I think people just can’t avoid it,” Ahmed Bedier told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Thanksgiving, he pointed out, is a time when people express things they’re grateful for. “So we’re giving thanks for whatever we have here, and our safety and security and peace, while others, especially in Gaza, don’t have the same luxury or privilege.”
Bedier is an Egyptian-American journalist and former executive director for the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). He also hosts WMNF 88.5-FM global affairs program “True Talk,” and knows that not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye on the issues. Households with mixed political views, or generational differences, will certainly have a hard time discussing the nuances of the decades-long conflict and the history that precedes it. But Bedier has seen a clarity in younger people who use social media to access diverse viewpoints and news sources.
“Surprisingly, at least for younger people, whether they’re Arab-Americans or Jewish-Americans or just young Americans, they tend to be more on the side of justice, meaning against the occupation of Palestine,” Bedier added.
That diversity has been reflected in the crowds of protestors who’ve taken to local streets over the last two months. Most recently a large pro-Palestinian protest marched on the Tampa Riverwalk on Nov. 11 (SEE PHOTOS BELOW), just days after hundreds gathered for a pro-Israel rally in St. Petersburg.
When Bedier talks to young people, their activism boils down not necessarily to religion, but to equal rights for all and an end to the occupation.
“Most people, especially young people, have this kind of idealism about justice and fairness—they get it. They see it’s not fair for two people to be living on the same land but have two sets of laws and two very different treatments based on their religion,” he added. What equal rights looks like, Bedier said, is up to the people there to decide. “One state, two states, or a federation. For the last 75 years Palestinians do not have equal rights to Israelis or the right to self determination at all, and that is unacceptable. As long as that continues, there will not be peace and violence will continue.”
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published last week shows that Americans are divided over whether or not the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 attack has been too much. The same poll, however, found that, “The number of people who said the response has gone too far is up 12 points from a month ago.”
The disproportionate toll on human life—about 1,200 Israelis killed and more than 240 taken hostage in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, plus almost 13,000 Palestinians dead including nearly 9,000 women and children—is part of the discussion, but so are issues like Israel’s existence and its military.
While many pro-Palestinian locals and leaders have unequivocally denounced Hamas and the attack that’s been labeled “Israel’s 9/11,” Jonathan Ellis told CL that the next, and most difficult question for his community is how to both militarily and politically remove Hamas—which came to power in what pundits have called a flawed 2006 election. He said Hamas does not adhere to international rules of war, and that solace is the general feeling in his community when it has to face the statistic that 40% of those killed in Palestine are children.
“Israel needs to do what it needs to do to remove the Hamas threat, and at the same time, attempt to keep any and all collateral damage to a minimum—those are the two things,” Ellis, chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Tampa JCC, added. “You don’t want to kill innocent civilians. But on the other hand, you need to eradicate Hamas.”
Ellis said that because of “Hamas’s use of its citizens as human shields, you cannot always get both.” (Some experts say that, “Non-combatant civilians even if used as human shields are entitled to protection.”) He added that there are varying opinions within the Bay area’s Jewish community and that his organization generally has its finger on the pulse of that community
“Thought in different communities vary,” Ellis said. “But in the circles in which I am traveling and the people with whom I am dealing, there is a legitimate and large support for Israel.”
Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of North Tampa’s Beth Am congregation agreed with Ellis, and told CL that while his synagogue is Zionist, there have been people who have and not been in love with Israel and its policies.
“At the same time, there is a lot of concern for Palestinians and for the innocents who are being harmed,” Rosenberg said, adding that on Thanksgiving, people should remember that regardless of who is right or wrong, there are people suffering on both sides. “No one should feel good about the fact that anyone is suffering even if you see them as an enemy.”
[content-1] Turning an enemy into a pariah is tricky, too. Last Tuesday, after Florida Rep. Angie Nixon filed a proposal for a resolution that would have called for an “immediate de-escalation and cease-fire” in the war between Israel and Hamas, Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who is Jewish, said, “If you vote for this, you’re an anti-Semite.”
But Ellis said that someone could ask for a ceasefire, or criticize aspects of Israel’s approach without being anti semitic—so as long as that person was not holding Israel to a double standard, denying Israel’s right to exist or Jewish people their own right to self-determination.
And for Laith Abdel, a first-generation Palestinian-American who moved to Tampa when he was three days old, discussion must address the long history in the region.
Abdel—who shared some of his family’s story and brought up a Palestinian flag when his band Mindwash played Ybor City last weekend—points to a growing desire for peace on both sides of the conflict.
“But state actors and terrorist groups are making these moves unilaterally, and they’re not reflecting the views of their own people,” he told CL.
“There’s a lot of generational trauma on both sides, and both sides have committed atrocities over the course of the past 75 years,” Abdel said. “But I think it’s an objective fact that the Palestinians are at a detriment. They don’t have their own state. They’re oppressed, limited, and treated as an other—even as Arab citizens in Israel they also experience racism from extremist Israeli communities.”
“There is a lot of historical context and basic knowledge of the conflict missing from a lot of people who take one side,” he added. “At the end of the day, this is about basic human rights.”
