Alana Zeitchik, who has six cousins who are being held by Hamas as hostages in Gaza, addressed the March for Israel rally in Washington DC today.
“I am here with you because I love my family, “and I promised I would scream to the ends of the earth for them. This unwavering love of family is the heart of what it means to be Jewish, and it is more importantly the heart of what it means to be human,” Zeitchik said.
“But for too many in the West, the suffering of hostages’ families like mine has become a footnote, collateral damage in service of some perceived higher universal truth.
“For too many, it feels like to care about one family, to love one child, is to diminish the suffering of another. But the simple human truth is that you don’t have to choose. You can abhor the suffering of Palestinian families and the suffering of Israeli families like mine,” Zeitchik saidd
“You can call for peace and the immediate return of the innocent men, women and children who were violently taken from us. It doesn’t need to be political to share in my grief or in the anguish that the Israeli people are feeling.”