Newsweek: Calling for a Ceasefire is Anti-Semitic

When dozens of protestors halted traffic on a major Los Angeles highway this week, it was the latest in a string of major public calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. The demonstration, led by the notorious anti-Israel group IfNotNow, followed a vote for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas from 153 countries (the U.S. voted against) during an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly.

As an Israeli Jew who helped Palestinian civilians during my five year service in the Israeli Defense Forces, I would love nothing more than for our two peoples to live side by side in peace. Innocent Palestinians deserve every freedom and to realize their national aspirations. Sadly, the only thing standing between us and a ceasefire is Hamas, a terrorist organization whose raison d'etre is to eliminate Israel and kill Jews.

For this reason alone, calls for a ceasefire are neither a commitment to human rights nor an effort to preserve life. Instead, they are a demand that Jews not defend themselves from genocide.

To pretend that this isn't the case not only ignores the reality on the ground but is deeply antisemitic and an outright denial of the Indigenous connection and national rights that Jews have to Israel.

[...] Hamas' objective is to kill Jews, an objective its pattern of breaking past ceasefires has made clear. As unpleasant as the reality is, calls for a ceasefire are calls to perpetuate and promote antisemitic violence against innocents.

One can criticize Israel without being antisemitic, the pro-Palestinian faction says. I agree with that statement. But calling for a ceasefire at this juncture is not criticism; it's a dogwhistle, a demand that Jews to lay down and accept the attacks against them.

[...] But much like the chant "from the river to the sea," the calls for "a ceasefire" have turned into another thinly veiled euphemism for the destruction of the Jewish state that is meant to fool the American public.