In a May 25 op-ed in these pages (“What will it take to stop the Gaza genocide?“), Connie Jenkins asks: “What will it take for citizens in this country to be out in the streets to stop the unforgivable genocide of Palestinians?”

I’m not sure, but I have a few ideas about what’s holding people back. As a Jewish friend said when I asked him about the paucity of active opposition from American Jews, it’s complicated.

Many of us who are not Jewish worry that such action would be seen as antisemitism by our Jewish friends. And given how horrible the Holocaust was, don’t we non-Jews have an obligation to side with Israel and give it every benefit of the doubt when it justifies what it is doing in Gaza by saying it is necessary to wipe out Hamas?

I doubt if enough non-Jews will take to the streets until many more American Jews do. So why don’t they recognize how evil Israel is acting? Some think it’s because not enough Jews understand how unfair Israel’s statehood was to the people who lived in the territory that had been known as Palestine for centuries, the vast majority of whom were Arabs.

Undoubtedly and understandably, the Jewish refugees from genocide in Christian Europe wanted to believe that Palestine was a barren land to which they could escape. Unfortunately, this belief was based on lies told to the refugees and supporters by the founders of Israel and the American Zionist lobby. How difficult it must now be for many Jews to recognize what really happened, and the harm that was done and is still being done to the Palestinians.

So, if not enough American Jews are able to admit the truth of the matter and demand that the United States cease support of Israel’s genocide, how realistic is to expect non-Jews to do so, particularly given our own history of genocide of our Indigenous peoples and our own myth that America was a barren land.

Perhaps what is required for citizens of this country to be out in the streets is learning, and accepting, the history of Palestine, not as portrayed by Zionists to justify its settlement but as factually presented by historians, such as Nur Masalha, the author of “Palestine, A Four Thousand Year History,” and Rashid Khalidi, author of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.”

More people in the streets is a worthy objective, but not itself sufficient to change our government’s unconditional support of Israel. That will require Congress to stop bending to the will of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel PAC that contributes more resources directly to candidates than any other PAC with members in every congressional district.

AIPAC has been actively involved in defeating candidates who have been critical of Israeli policy. According to AIPAC’s website, 98% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their general election races in 2022. Again, another reason to try to get money out of politics.

In this time of great turmoil and suffering in this country, it is hard to hold the suffering of the people of Gaza in the forefront of our minds. But their suffering is so profound and so much worse than most of ours, Americans should hold that suffering in our hearts and take to the streets.