Jacob Bender

My mother, Sabell Bender, died two days ago at the age of 92 after many years of painfully declining health. Even in her final years, when her assembly of medical conditions had left her immobile and robbed her of her booming and unforgettable voice, she clung to life with all the dedication and exuberance and yes, stubbornness, with which she had lived her nine decades on the Earth. Sabell was a born director and a force of nature, who, while acknowledging that she was a product of her times, also believed with all her heart that her abundance of talent and creativity made it possible for her to influence the times in which she lived.

Looking back at the human carnage and geopolitical disaster wrought by the American invasion of Iraq, you might conclude that there were no heroes to be found in this quagmire. You would be wrong, however.

Many of our readers know that I was born into a Jewish immigrant home, my parents and grandparents having migrated to this country to escape the anti-Semitic persecution and poverty of Czarist Russia. This experience, as well as the commitment to justice that lies at the heart of Jewish tradition, contributed to my family’s engagement with social justice activism across four generations.

If all goes according to plan — and that’s a big “if” given the unprecedented absurdism of the current presidential administration and its chief executive — this Thursday, a lonely woman will walk into Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in our nation’s capital to be questioned by, among others, a clique of white men determined to prove her a liar and destroy her reputation before the eyes of the world. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that the fate of American democracy may hinge upon how Dr. Christine Blasey Ford responds to her tormentors.

I spent Monday glued to the BBC, Reuters, Aljazeera, and Haaretz broadcasts from Gaza. By Tuesday morning we knew that 58 Palestinian demonstrators had been killed by Israeli troops, while a staggering 2,700 had been wounded, including one infant who died from tear gas inhalation.

For American Jews of my generation, the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War was a seminal event. In the official narrative propagandized by the mainstream Jewish community, the beleaguered Jewish State, surrounded by millions of fanatical Arabs bent on “pushing the Jews into the sea,” beat back a surprise attack by the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria only to emerge victorious. The Sinai, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights were conquered the Israeli Army. That such a seemingly miraculous victory was even possible confirmed, in Jewish eyes, the righteousness of the entire Zionist endeavor.

It would take many years to learn that this official Jewish narrative was built upon a foundation of lies and injustice.

For American Jews who, like myself, have long been public critics of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and its draconian human rights abuses, the insults are nothing new. And one unfortunately gets used to these sorts of slurs on social media. Still, I was unprepared for this short email that arrived in our office on Monday morning this week...

One narrative technique of imaginative fiction is for the hero to wake up from a deep sleep in a strange time and place. From Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” to Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,” from Dorothy’s sojourn in the Land of Oz” to Woody Allen’s “Sleeper” and episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” writers have utilized this literary device to hold up a mirror to their own times.