Being part of a “community” is a primordial human instinct. Within a community, one can find warmth and a sense of security in shared values and familiar principles. It is a comforting space, a promised land where hopes, fears, challenges, and victories can be shared.
Yet, being a community also comes with responsibilities, the foremost being its protection. Defending the community even when it stumbles and errs: standing by it in public, reprimanding it in private—just like a family.
However, there are extreme circumstances where, in order to protect the community, one must take a stand against it, ensuring it changes course and that, due to the actions of a few, the stigma of dishonor does not fall upon all.
This is why, in the days following the mafia attacks, the Sicilian community took to the streets spontaneously and sincerely to tell the world, “Sicily is not the Mafia.”
Similarly, in 2015, after the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo editorial office, the Muslim community flooded the squares of Europe with the cry of “Not in my name.”
Today, in the face of over 400 people massacred in Gaza on March 18 by Netanyahu’s government (including one of the hostages), it becomes imperative for Jewish organizations in Europe to take a clear and firm position to prevent the creeping tide of antisemitism from staining their name.
Several European Jews, as individuals, have already condemned the war crimes committed in Palestine, but that is no longer enough. More than ever, an official, unified stance is needed from Jewish communities that, until now, have been too timid in condemning atrocities committed under ideological pretexts and as a political shield for the survival of a few murderers in power.
Many may have seen the image circulating on the internet, shared by Historical Pics: a black-and-white crowd from the 1930s raising their arms in salute to the Führer. And there, tucked in a corner, stands a man with his arms crossed—a symbol of defiance against murderous power.
Yet, that lone act of resistance was not enough to absolve an entire people from the horrors that soon followed. That photo teaches us that a handful of dissenters may go down in history as heroes, but without an official, collective repudiation of history’s atrocities, it becomes difficult to reject, in hindsight, accusations of complicity.
Being complicit is a choice, just as indifference is.
Not in our name: shout it to the world, to the politicians sending weapons, to the companies supplying a murderous government.
Jewish community, we want you at the forefront of this battle for peace. Because your voice is the loudest; you are the trumpets at the gates of Jericho.
But most importantly, beyond empty rhetoric, let it be clear: those who do not disassociate themselves—regrettably—are complicit.
Luca Schiaccitano
