Jewish Enough to Know Better

A guest post from a Jewish American writer and public health expert

This is a guest piece by Eve of Pari & Eve, MPH, a Jewish American writer and public health expert. I encourage my readers of Let’s Address This to read this with the same care and support that you graciously offer while reading my pieces. I am grateful to voices like that of Eve for speaking truth to power, elevating calls for justice and humanity, and recognizing the need for unity in these difficult times. I hope you enjoy and share her piece below. Let’s Address This.

I grew up never being “Jewish enough.”

My dad is Jewish. My mom isn’t. I lived in a predominantly Jewish town where I went to a total of 17 bat/bar mitzvahs, but I didn’t go to Hebrew school myself. I knew the words to “Hava Nagila” but my parents never even told me my Jewish name until I was 20 years old and was stopped by Israeli immigration boarding a Birthright flight to Tel Aviv. Jewish enough to go on Birthright but not enough to be accepted by synagogues as part of the insider community. The inconsistency is laughable.

All that said, I was close enough to hear “never again” on repeat from my Jewish friends and family my entire life. And I always wondered: never again for who?

Israel has made the answer devastatingly clear. The Israeli government’s deliberate, unrelenting attacks on Palestinian civilians causing over 60,000 deaths proves that “never again” was never meant for everyone.

As of this month, two of the three official famine thresholds have been breached in Gaza and conditions are deteriorating so quickly that the worst-case famine scenario is no longer hypothetical. Over 95% of Gaza lacks access to clean drinking water because fuel shortages and collapsing infrastructure has disabled desalination plants. At least 500 attacks on medical facilities have been documented since the war began, and only 4 of 22 UN-run clinics remain. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May 2025 by aerial strikes while trying to access food distribution sites.

The conflict is devastating from every angle, but women are paying a distinct and disproportionate price:

Sanitation facilities for menstruating people have collapsed. Without clean water, hygiene products, or functioning toilets, menstruation becomes a source of infection and shame; yet another reminder that even in crisis, women’s needs are last on the list.

Pregnant people in Gaza are being forced to give birth in tents, in bombed-out buildings, in the backs of trucks without clean water, electricity, anesthesia, or skilled providers. The destruction of Gaza’s reproductive health infrastructure, including the only Planned Parenthood affiliate in Gaza, has been so complete that UN experts are calling it genocidal under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention. Birth control is not available and neither is abortion while sexual violence escalates at the hands of the Israeli forces. Women are being forced to carry pregnancies that result from rape with no medical or legal support.

The UN Human Rights Council described gender-based violence in Gaza as being carried out with strategic intent and constitutes part of a broader genocidal campaign. I cannot stress enough that this is not some version of unfortunate collateral damage. This is genocide by design and American public opinion is now reflecting this.

U.S. support for Israel’s military actions has dropped 10 percentage points since 2023; only 8% of Democrats support Israel’s military action which is saying a lot when 7 in 10 Jewish Americans identify as Democrat. This is because history taught Jews to stand up for human rights. To say “never again” and to mean it.

So from someone who’s half-Jewish but fully human: we have no moral ground in silence. We have an obligation to protect our fellow humans in Gaza, not in spite of our history, but because of it. This is the time to speak up. Will you join me?

In solidarity,

Eve

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What You Can Do

• We need to get food into Gaza. Donate to our IG fundraiser for the Palestine Child Relief Fund. This group provides medical aid, treatment, food, water, and necessities for affected families. They also provide long term support rebuilding healthcare facilities, and funding trauma counseling and mental health services to foster healing in the community.

• You can also donate to World Central Kitchen. WCK has been actively providing meals on the ground in Gaza since October 2023 through high-volume kitchens and meal distributions by land, sea, and air. They have lost their own staff providing meals to those in need during Israeli air strikes.

• Donate to the Palestine Family Planning and Protection Association. This is Planned Parenthood’s only affiliate in Gaza. They lost one of their key providers in an Israeli air strike and last released info on their services in February. Learn more here.

Repro Ready is made possible by you—if you support our coverage of Gaza, consider becoming a paid subscriber to our movement for justice.

Find us @GEMMA_Talks, @evexplains, @pariphrased