menu_open Columnists
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Keep Talking About Gaza at Your Thanksgiving Table

15 1
27.11.2025
Relatives of Palestinians who lost their lives in Israeli attacks that violated the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip mourn at the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on Nov. 23, 2025. Photo: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images

If Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been a site of tension in your family for the last two Thanksgiving holidays, this year should be no different. The so-called ceasefire might seem like a good excuse to bury the hatchet and enjoy a quieter turkey dinner, but when we look at the harrowing status quo for Palestinians in Gaza today, there is no peace to be thankful for — especially not on a day that marks the remembrance of this country’s own genocide against Indigenous Americans.

To be clear, if two years of livestreamed annihilation have failed to shift your loved ones’ support away from the Israeli ethnostate, I doubt there is anything a dinner table argument could do to persuade them. There can be no reasoning with a worldview that forecloses seeing Palestinians as fully human.

I navigate this with pro-Israel members of my own British Jewish family. It’s painful, and I don’t have any good advice. Whatever your approach with your family, there can be no pretense that the genocide in Gaza is over.

I’ll be thinking of another family this Thanksgiving: that of my student from Gaza.

Families like mine, divided over Israel, are not the important ones here. For my part, I’ll be thinking instead of another family this Thanksgiving: that of my student from Gaza. He escaped in........

© The Intercept