In 2022 I visited Burin, a small village just south of Nablus and below a Jewish settlement called Yitzhar.  I went as part of the weekly solidarity visits organized by Rabbis for Human Rights who accompany Palestinian farmers to their fields during the olive harvest. The Israelis join the harvest both as part of protective presence – to  help deter attacks, harassment and theft of olives by extremist settlers—and to lend a hand during the short time window that the IDF allows the farmers to access their lands near settlements.

The locals I met shared stories of burned olive groves, ongoing threats of violence and the fear of losing their livelihood. Their accounts resonated deeply on a personal level. My grandmother’s family lived through the pogroms in Uman eventually fleeing to Southern Ukraine for safety and my paternal great-grandfather was killed in a random act of violence in Eastern Ukraine, leaving behind my great-grandmother to care for their 10 children. The history of fear, flight and dispossession is part of my Jewish identity, just like it is for many Jews with roots in Eastern Europe.

Our painful past makes us particularly adept at recognizing danger and at naming violence perpetrated by an angry mob against a community for what it is—a pogrom.  Including when the perpetrators are Jewish.

But in a recent article for the Tablet Magazine, Adam Louis-Klein tries to persuade us that what we see as indefensible and incompatible with Jewish values could simply be dismissed by branding it as the new “antizionist libel.” According to him, the reporting on settler violence in the West Bank is an information operation, a politically motivated media “hysteria” campaign seeking to “categorize Jews in Judea and Samaria as terrorists.” He warns that it “will surely license further attacks on Jews across the globe.”

I understand why some people may identify with this last statement. There are real concerns about the safety of Jews in the diaspora, and for some, acknowledging wrongdoing may feel like handing ammunition to the very people that wish us harm. But there has to be a better way to reconcile our........

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