Actress Julianna Margulies has spoken up against a “silence on antisemitism” in an op-ed she wrote for USA Today. She directly addressed her “non-Jewish friends” who have failed to reach out after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“The events in Israel have shone a light on something I never realized: You, my loving, non-Jewish friends, have no idea of the Jewish experience, of living in our shoes, of learning from the stories of our parents and grandparents,” Julianna wrote in the op-ed, titled ‘My non-Jewish friends, your silence on antisemitism is loud.’
Julianna said that only two of her friends asked her if she was okay after the attacks. “By your inaction to reach out, I immediately thought about the Jews of the Holocaust and what that must have felt like when no one spoke out, or stood up to protect them,” she said.
‘There are no sides’
Julianna further said that she has always expressed her support for the Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ+ community, and also recalled how she spoke up when she heard “immigrant children were being held in cages.”
“In the week following this horrific event, the silence on your end was deafening. My Jewish girlfriends and I huddled together, crying and trying to make sense of a world gone mad. ‘It’s 2023!’ We said to one another, ‘How is this still happening?’ I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I felt sick to my stomach,” Julianna wrote.
Julianna also called out the idea that people across the globe were taking sides amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. “Sides???? There are no sides. This isn’t about sides; this was a terrorist act against Jews by Hamas. Just like the Nazis, Hamas’ main goal: to cleanse the world of Jews,” she wrote.
‘This isn’t your reality, it is ours’
Julianna went on to explain how children are never born with hate in their hearts, but are taught. “You, my friends, have no hate in your hearts: that is why I love you. So when I showed up at an event the other night to do a reading of short stories and saw so many people I knew and loved there, friends and colleagues of mine whom I adore, I was shocked to see that no one seemed to be carrying the weight of what took place in Israel: a weight that is hanging heavily on every Jewish person I know,” she wrote.
“And then I realized: This isn’t your reality, it is ours. You mean no harm, you simply don’t have the full picture,” she added.
She concluded by saying, “We are hurting and we are terrified, because history has shown us that this won’t end well for the Jewish people if you don’t hear our cries for help.”