Every Jew around the world is fighting Hamas - opinion

• Published date: 24 March 2024
• Author: JUDAH EISEN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

My world and the world of every Jewish person I know turned upside down. It all happened so suddenly. Having heard of antisemitism or campus anti-Zionism in the past, I now see it and feel it in every fiber of my being. Every university campus, friend, and relative I know is affected by a fierce anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment that makes me quiver

With zero lead time, a violent wave of emotion erupted like a volcano. Neither I nor anyone I know has a clue how to handle this. We have no lived experience that guides us through this. Our parents are also inexperienced with this. In fact, my own parents tell me they have never personally experienced palpable Jew hatred before this.

While we struggle here in our universities and in every city on the planet, our brothers and sisters in Israel are suffering through a long, grueling war. It is agonizing for us to see our people under such a heavy military burden, feel the guilt of not being there, and have to find ways to survive here. Like I say, this is all new to me. This added dimension complicates our everyday life here at the University of Western Ontario.

So how do I, a newly developing but rapidly maturing young Jewish student, handle all of this sudden and fierce emotion? All of us have had to find support from each other. We've had to talk much more with family than we ever did (or wanted to). We've reached out to our friends and joined student groups that we might not have otherwise joined. There are more students going to Hillel and Chabad dinners than there ever were before.

We all want to huddle together and share the warmth that comes with togetherness. There's no way to handle this much pain and confusion alone. And this strikes me as the silver lining in this calamity and poses a potential opportunity.

It seems clear to me that in a very brief moment, Hamas was able to convert a sharply-divided Jewish nation into a tightly unified one. We now reach out and hold onto each other tighter than...