The Desecration of Cemeteries and Genocide Denying Rabbis
In December 2022 Israeli voters selected their most extreme right, racist governmental coalition ever. Headed up by Binyamin Netanyahu and including fanatical Jewish settlers such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, it was obvious to anyone paying attention that they were itching to expel and kill every Palestinian they could. In less than a year they got the golden opportunity they were looking for.
Almost immediately after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the leaders of the State of Israel announced their plan to obliterate the entirety of the Gaza Strip, destroying all of the resources and infrastructure needed to maintain a society, and killing or expelling all of its inhabitants. It wasn’t subtle and it wasn’t nuanced — they were clear about their intentions. It did not take them long to begin its implementation.
One of the many methods of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza involved a systematic campaign to desecrate the graves of Palestinians. They razed entire cemeteries, with the worst of these crimes happening in the northern part of the territory, in and around Gaza City. While Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officials would sometimes give weak excuses for their behavior, the desecration of dead Palestinians was never done for serious military objectives. Dead people don’t fight. The real point of the actions were to send a message to the civilian population. The message was clear: leave this place and never come back — there is nothing here for you anymore — even your ancestors are now gone. We have erased their bodies and the markers you used to aid in your memories.
The systematic razing of cemeteries is a tell-tale sign that a genocide is taking place.
Israel carried out its most intense campaigns of cemetery destruction in December 2023 and January 2024. It was documented in real time by Palestinian journalists, who gave their lives for their profession in numbers greater than any other conflict in human history after being intentionally targeted for murder by the Israeli military. It was documented by CNN.
In June of 2024 thirty five St. Louis area rabbis (and one cantor) signed a letter stating that to accuse the State of Israel of committing “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” was “an outrageous smear”. This included every rabbi at the Central Reform Congregation, the only Jewish congregation within the City of St. Louis. The letter itself was an outrageous smear against then-Congresswoman Cori Bush, whom they falsely accused of “antisemitism”. Cori Bush had rightly accused Israel of beginning a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and she was a member of Congress. Due to her position, she had some power over the massive amount of American weaponry and other support being given to the Israeli military. She wanted to use her power to change things, because she did not want more innocent people to die.
What brings so many rabbis, including those who consider themselves to be progressive and anti-racist, to publicly deny an ongoing genocide? What makes trans rights activist Rabbi Daniel Bogard and anti-trans rights activist Rabbi Ze’ev Smason feel so strongly about dismissing a genocide that they are willing to sign their names together on the same letter? These are rabbis, who have all studied and referenced the Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe, and who have all told their congregations “never again”. With this training, they should have developed the ability to see and oppose a textbook case of genocide occurring in front of their eyes, as it has been well documented by its victims and others. This was not the beginning, nobody could still claim to be in shock about the Hamas-led attack from eight months before — it was right after Israel went right past Joe Biden’s “red line” and invaded the besieged city of Rafah, full of terrified and desperate refugees from the rest of the Gaza Strip. This was after the mass spring uprising of American students. And it was months after the Israeli campaign to raze Palestinian cemeteries.
It’s not like the rabbis did not understand the significance of grave desecration. In 2017 a vandal knocked over 157 tombstones at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, the place where the majority of my known ancestors are buried. It was later reported that the actions of the perpetrator “were not motivated by hate”, but the fear that such an act brought to the St. Louis Jewish community was real and understandable. Grave desecration was a technique used by the Nazis to humiliate and demoralize Jews. It is a particularly jarring and offensive action. Like many Jewish St. Louisans I went to check on the tombstones of my family, thankfully, none of them had been toppled.
Because of the seriousness of the event, Rabbi Susan Talve, one the signatories of the genocide denying letter, honored those whose graves were desecrated at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetary by reading all of their names during a Shabbat service.
The greater St. Louis community and the entire country took the issue seriously. Vice President Mike Pence and Governor Eric Grietens came to the cemetery to offer their support. The Muslim community in particular took the issue seriously. Mufti Asif Umar with the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis said in a statement that the organization condemned the acts. The Missouri chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Imam Council of Metropolitan St. Louis encouraged Muslim congregations to donate money toward repairing the cemetery. Noted Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour also organized Muslims to raise money to help repair the damage.
Given the history of grave desecration against Jews, the Israeli campaign of razing Palestinian cemeteries should have sent alarm bells ringing in the heads of all of these rabbis, but it did not. They all denied an ongoing genocide and told the general public that if you don’t deny the genocide then we will label you as an anti-Jewish bigot. This stifled and cowed many people to stay silent, to not speak up, to not take action. Who wants to be accused of antisemitism? In this way all of these rabbis have abetted the genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Some of these rabbis are just now starting to wake up to the full horrors of what the State of Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people of Gaza, now that the months-long intentional starvation campaign has reached the point where mass deaths from famine can no longer be avoided. This coming after weeks of stories about starving children being shot, when lured into Israeli and American controlled aid distribution centers. The images are horrible — but the images were already horrible in October of 2023. By June of 2024 they were catastrophic and undeniable.
So what do we do now? These rabbis have failed us. They have failed to honor our shared humanity. The same can be said of establishment Jewish organizations in St. Louis who have led the effort to deny this genocide and label those who opposed it as anti-Jewish bigots (through such efforts as their advocacy of the racist, anti-Palestinian IHRA definition of antisemitism) — most notably the St. Louis Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), the National Council of Jewish Women, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Saint Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, and the American Jewish Committee.
These rabbis and these institutions have forfeited their moral authority. They are intellectual accessories to genocide. They have no right to sit in judgement of others on issues of bigotry and dehumanization. There should be accountability for such a serious moral transgression.
I believe that people deserve second chances if they publicly acknowledge what they have done wrong and change their ways. I also believe in forgiveness, but it is not my place to forgive these people. They should be begging for forgiveness from Cori Bush and much more importantly from the entirety of the Palestinian people who are dying, starving, and suffering. They need to start by immediately and publicly pushing our government and the government of Israel to let food into Gaza, to let in UNWRA and other agencies in to distribute the food, and end the bombings, the shootings, and the mass incarceration of Palestinians. Then they must join the world effort to force Israel to end the 77 year long oppression of the Palestinian people. This push must include support for real mechanisms to make it happen — arms embargoes, boycotts, sanctions and prosecutions of Israeli war criminals. It would not erase the past harm. Gaza cannot be un-destroyed, cemeteries cannot be un-desecrated and un-razed, but using their positions to promote an end to the genocide would be a first step that they could take to show that they are changing in the face of this horror.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article was published on the author’s Medium page.
