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Six Members of My Family Are Hostages in Gaza. Does Anyone Care?

(New York Times) Alana Zeitchik - Israeli children have been held in captivity in Gaza for four weeks. Three of them are my little cousins. My cousin Sharon Cunio, her husband David, their 3-year-old twins Emma and Yuli, my cousin Danielle Alony, and her 5-year-old daughter Amelia were hiding together in their bomb shelter while Hamas went on a murderous rampage through Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7. The last contact my family had from them is a WhatsApp message simply saying, "Help, we're dying." I spotted some of my family on a TikTok video. They were being carted away, surrounded by terrorists shouting, "Allahu akbar." Recently, my brother and I hung "kidnapped" posters of our family around Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Within a day, almost all of them had been ripped down. Some were replaced with posters reading, "Honor the martyr." Again and again I hear that Israel is a country of white colonizers and oppressors. My maternal grandparents grew up in Yemen, where Jews were persecuted as second-class citizens. In 1949 they were airlifted during Operation Magic Carpet to the newly formed state of Israel. As refugees fleeing oppression, they began their lives in Israel in poverty. So maybe you can imagine my surprise the first time I heard my Israeli family called "white colonizers." When did we become white? And how could a family fleeing persecution be perceived as colonizers?
2023-11-06 00:00:00
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