When, many years ago, my grandfather, still a boy, found himself in the middle of the vast ocean aboard the last ship that left England for America, seeking refuge from the oppressive Nazi-fascist racial laws, he felt for the first time – he told me – the weight of his Jewish identity.
Being Jewish is a complex experience that transcends religion. Too often it is mistakenly simplified into an ethnic label or reduced to the confines of matrilineal descent. However, the essence of feeling Jewish embraces configurations far broader than these. It intertwines with a rich tapestry of life experiences, particularly those marked by persecution, exile, and the ongoing dialectical opposition to the simplifications that those who insist on categorizing humanity into neat boxes love to apply.
This journey of identity is a reminder that complex heritage is shaped for each of us not only by ancestry but also by resilience in the face of adversity. It reflects the deep connection of personal stories to the larger History and compels us to honor the constant commitment to remember the trials faced by those who came before us. Complexity that is not only of Jewish identity but of humanity in general.
Netanyahu, in his latest speech in the United States and during these months of constant massacre of the population of Gaza and the West Bank, has dared, just like those who have done so with the intention of killing them, to put all Jews into a single category. He claims the right to speak for them, yet he is against them, and the truth is that – it is unclear whether consciously or not – he is not doing a favor to Jews around the world, and certainly not to Israelis, but causing them serious harm. Today, only fools confuse the world's anger towards Israel with antisemitism, and Netanyahu has the audacity to thank President Trump on behalf of all Israelis and all Jewish people.
I felt disgust towards this statement, I felt, and I am sure many others of Jewish descent with me, violated in my identity, abused by a criminal.
For months I have felt like I am in the middle of the sea, just like my teenage grandfather, between Europe and America, more aware than ever of the impact that the history of my Jewish family and the great History that has marked them has had on my life and the culture to which I belong.
Courtesy of the family archive, the grandfather of Widad Tamimi and the stars and stripes flag photographed upon arrival in the United States.
It is a story of diasporas, of great pains, of many languages, of insurmountable distances due to the escapes we have been forced into, of the ethical commitment that has always been the true and only sense of election that has motivated our family to feel not superior to other peoples, but responsible for universal rights common to all humanity. And it is precisely our pain that drives us to the front of the procession of all those who feel this call and to urge us to be, even more than others, guardians of an obligation of compassion, in the true sense of suffering with others, because the pain we experience should offer us the opportunity to perceive that of others more easily.
So to Netanyahu and to those who dare to tarnish our name even by thanking a man, a state, and many others, including those in Europe, guilty not only of passivity but also of the active support provided in the sale of arms, in blocking humanitarian corridors, in destroying the legitimacy of international law and the institutions of the UN, including UNRWA (created with the intent to exclude Palestinians from the right that protects all refugees in the world except them, under the 1951 Convention and the offices of UNHCR, depriving them of the possibility of having a permanent solution including the return to their land), I say one thing and one thing only: not in the name of all the Jews in the world. Let no one dare to thank Trump in our name, not in the name of all Jews, because what the world has done to the Palestinian population for 80 years and what it is now completing with a final act worthy only of this long and macabre spectacle that one day everyone will say they opposed, has not been supported by all the Jews in the world. On the contrary: we are ashamed of it.
What is really missing is the final twist, not the condemnation of war criminals for the extermination of children, women, the sick, and the elderly, but rather the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to them.