By JODY BENSON
Los Alamos

Andi Kron sent a heartfelt letter to the world’s population asking: “Whose Side are You On.” She asks why people protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Israeli settlers’ takeover of ancestral Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

As a girl, I read Ann Frank. I grew up with the shame of knowing we could’ve done something about the Nazi genocide of Jews, even of a girl who never did anything but dream of becoming a film star, a journalist, a writer, of living in freedom…. And they killed her just because of who she was. My shame was that I wasn’t able to hide a family and save Ann Frank.

One of Hitler’s excuses for genocide was that Germany only lost WWI because communist Jews “stabbed Germany in the back” to cause its collapse from within. Their treachery—Jews, socialists, Roma, gays, anyone not pureblood Aryan—was what weakened and threatened the Master Race. How could Germans feel safe from terrorists within, especially terrorists who ritually baked the blood of Christian children into their matzos? Like Germany, how can Israel feel safe when Hamas will eat a child’s liver?

Another holocaust is being committed now in Gaza. Whose side am I on? The side of Palestinian children who still survive even as an average of one Palestinian child every hour dies. The side of Palestinian survivors who, like those of Nazi concentration camps, will suffer the guilt of being alive while too many of their families and neighbors are not. The side of Israelis who, like Germans with their excuse that they “didn’t know” what was happening in the concentration camps, face the trauma of confronting what is happening in their name on the other side of the wall. The side of all those—the atrocity survivors or committers who are part of the millennia-long trauma—from Sara and Hagar to Netanyahu and now-leaderless Hamas—that continues until we stop it. Whether the name is Ann Frank or Hind Rajab, I hope I have the courage to stand against atrocity, because this genocide is one America has the power to end.

Ann Frank was in hiding for two-years and one month. She survived another eight months in the camps where she died of starvation and disease. The Ann Franks of Gaza have been under attack for two years and ten months. They, too, are dying of starvation and disease.

So, whose side am I on? Ours. Humanity’s. The God of Isaac, Ishmael, and Jesus is the same God who created each human in God’s image. When we look at the face of another, we can have the holy vision to see in the other the sacred face of the divine. Whose side am I on? Not genocide. As in 1933, this is our slaughter to end.