When Enough is Enough

September 19, 2025 Guest Contributor

Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City on Sept. 14. (Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images, via JTA)

By Daniel Rifkin

In a previous issue of this magazine, an editorial was printed suggesting that Jewish parents have a “responsibility” to their children to speak in support of Israel’s current war effort.

I have also read several articles bemoaning and postulating as to why younger generations of Jewish people do not seem to support Israel the same way that older ones do.

Strangely, none of those pieces bothered to actually interview a young person. As a (somewhat) younger Jewish person, I would like to offer my perspective.

Many claim that the issue is that young people do not know the history behind the current conflict. Far from it, my experience is that young people are generally more educated and grew up in a more diverse world that exposed them to facts and viewpoints that were not taught to us at home.

We know the history, yet we are also able to view current events with the clarity and objectivity that comes from stepping outside one’s bubble.

The reality that young people cannot look away from is this: Israel has killed more Palestinian civilians, more women and more children every single year of our adult lives — and by an extremely lopsided margin. From 2008 to 2022, Israel killed over 3,000 civilians, including over 1,000 children.

During that same time Palestinians killed roughly 300 Israelis, many of whom were soldiers. And since 2023, Israel has killed more than 40,000 civilians — more than 10,000 children — far more than Hamas has killed in its entire existence.

For me and many my age, it is simply impossible to reconcile those facts with the claim that Hamas is the sole aggressor in this conflict and that Israel only acts in self-defense, or that they do everything they can to protect innocent lives.

Supporters will offer many excuses, but ask yourself: in any other conflict, would you believe that the side that has done the vast majority of the killing to be the good guys?

Let me also be clear, Hamas’s actions on 10/7 were horrible and unforgivable and I condemn them. I do not support Hamas. In fact, I don’t support any entity that needlessly takes the lives of massive numbers of civilians and children.

And that’s exactly why I won’t support what Israel has been doing either. If we condemn Hamas for harming and killing innocent people, then morally and logically we should also be condemning Israel for committing the same crimes (in much greater number) before and after 10/7.

And in the last few months, we have seen things are more horrifying than ever before, things that even longtime Israel defenders have found impossible to defend. There is simply no excuse for anyone to see the pictures we are seeing — such as innocent children starved to death — and continue to support a country that is causing it.

These are pictures that should remind us of our past, and motivate us to demand that our own government stop sending the military aid that allows it to continue.

I want everyone reading this to understand that it does not even make you anti-Israel to speak out about what is happening now. Even if you supported the war at its start, it is okay to say now that things have gone too far, to stop blindly supporting and start questioning.

As the Torah teaches, to everything there is a season, a time for war and a time for peace.

Now is the time to finally say: enough is enough.

Daniel Rifkin is a Baltimore-based immigration attorney.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Jmore.