Letter to the Editor: Response to Mark Wallach Op-Ed

Letter to the Editor

Submitted by Ben Eckert, Boulder, CO

Thoughts on Boulder Council member Mark Wallach’s condemnation of Adams and his 8/14/25 guest opinion in the Daily Camera. A condensed version of this essay was submitted multiple times to the Daily Camera. No response was ever received.

There are times when a man must stand on his principles no matter the cost. When appeasement and politeness become cowardice. For Boulder Council member Mark Wallach, that time is not when Israel drops 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps (2000-Pound Bombs Likely Used in Al-Mawasi Strike). It’s not when children must endure an amputation without anesthesia (Gaza doctors: ‘We leave patients to scream for hours and hours’ – BBC), because Israel refused entry of medical aid.  It’s not when a Palestinian man with Down syndrome is mauled by an IDF attack dog and left to die, his decomposing body found a week later by his family (Gaza man with Down’s syndrome attacked by IDF dog and left … – BBC),  And it’s certainly not when a starving five-year-old child, after hiking 12 km barefoot, kisses the hand of a former American Green Beret thanking him for the scraps of food he found on the ground, only to be shot in the head moments later by the IDF (GHF whistleblower says boy killed by Israel just after he collected aid).

No, Mark’s moment of courage is to condemn the only council member who has spoken out against these atrocities. He and the rest of the council, with the exception of Adams, insist it’s inappropriate to take a stand on these “nuanced” international affairs. They claim this is antisemitic. I would love to inquire what it is about Jewish identity that necessitates unconditional support for Israeli war crimes?  This assumption sounds more like antisemitism to me. (Straight Talk on the Charge of Jewish Disloyalty – ADL)

Mark and his colleagues objected to comparing the Holocaust with the European colonial conquest of the Americas which resulted in the near total extermination of the indigenous population, particularly in what is now the USA and Canada. Their objection claims this comparison diminishes the suffering of both. He equated Adams’ actions to a white member using the N-word. The arrogance of whitesplaining racism to a Black woman is startling, but if comparing genocides is so offensive, why accuse her only of antisemitism and not also of racism against Indigenous Americans?

The answer seems clear: he was offended that a Black woman dared compare the suffering of Indigenous Americans to white Europeans. This is not isolated—it reflects a larger phenomenon known as Holocaust exceptionalism, the belief that the Holocaust is uniquely egregious and incomparable, and that antisemitism is a uniquely heinous form of discrimination. But the Holocaust, like every genocide, is unique in its own way, and antisemitism is not inherently more egregious than other forms of racism.

Outside of a political Zionist framework, among scholars this debate has largely been settled.  Infact to be a genocide scholar is to compare genocides. All genocides occur in unique political contexts, but genocide is a process” (Genocide Is a Process, Not an Event” by Sheri P. Rosenberg) not a spontaneous random event.  There are commonality in this process, and if we are at all concerned with preventing genocides, it is crucial to understand them.  This is how scholars have been able to warn about the possibility of genocide in the Gaza Strip since at least 2009 (https://web.archive.org/web/20240118234838/https://www.countercurrents.org/boyle281209.htm). History may not repeat but it does rhyme.  Please dont take my word for it:

“There are important links between colonial genocide and the Holocaust, as well as meaningful conceptual gains to be made by thinking of the Holocaust in terms of comparative genocide.”
—Dan Stone, The Holocaust and its Historiography in The Historiography of Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)

“To what lengths Jewish historians, educators, and politicians go to remind us over and over of the difference between the destruction of the Jews of Europe and all other types of disasters, misfortunes, and mass murders. Biafra was only hunger; Cambodia was only civil war; the destruction of the Kurds was not systematic; death in the Gulag lacked national identification marks.”
—Adi Ophir, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University

“Having internalized certain views of the enemy—the Bolsheviks as Untermenschen; Hamas as human animals—and of the wider population as less than human and undeserving of rights, soldiers observing or perpetrating atrocities tend to ascribe them not to their own military, or to themselves, but to the enemy.”
—Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Brown University, and former IDF soldier

Mark calls it absurd to suggest race played a role in his alignment with 7 of his colleagues to condemn the lone black voice.  If so, will he also condemn the “antisemitism” of these Jewish Israeli scholars that also compare the Holocaust to other genocides, including Israels genocide in Gaza? I wont hold my breath because what’s truly absurd is pretending this has nothing to do with race and white supremacy.  I believe Mark when he says its nothing personal against Adams as a black woman, but he fails to understand that racism  is more than individual prejudice.  White supramacy is a system. 

Antisemitism today in America is real and on the rise, but it is not systemic in the way anti-Black racism, anti-Latino racism, and Islamophobia is.   Antisemitism used to be systemic, it was the Nuremberg Laws, it was Kristallnadt.  It was pogroms and systemic violence. However in 2025 America Jews, at least those of European descent, enjoy white privilege. (Congress is now 3 times more Jewish than the United States as a … 2020 Pew Study | Jewish Together) Today antisemitism is individual interpersonal prejudice—slurs, harassment, or occasional violence—which is unacceptable and should be opposed but it is not  the systemic oppression faced daily by communities of color. 

A hallmark of a supremacist system is elevating the feelings of those in the privileged group over the lives of those who are not. For Mark and his colleagues, Jewish feelings—at least those Jews they agree with—outweigh other Americans rights and worse Palestinian lives. That is racism and white/Jewish supremacy. 

Mark justifies his actions by citing a “traumatized Jewish community.” Yet Jews are not a monolith. An ever increasing amount of Jews are horrified by Israel’s actions. (One-third of Jewish-American teens say they ‘sympathise’ with)  Jews make up a disproportionate amount of those demanding an end to Israels actions. (Jewish activists arrested during Gaza war protest in US Congress) Many Jews understand all to well that by weaponizing  antisemitism to silence dissent and making Jews the only protected minority, as the anti “woke” and anti DEI Trump administration is doing (Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Takes Forceful and), then you are effectively making them the face of power.  The rise of antisemitism is not just from Israels actions, its also from politicians who are privileging Jewish feelings above the rights of others.  How does Mark and council not understand this?

Many constituents of the councils are equally traumatized, having spent 23 months watching atrocities against defenseless children. When asked to take a stand, Mark’s response is, “we can’t solve this, and we weren’t elected for our opinions on this.”  Does he expect to solve antisemitism with this condemnation and who was asking him to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict?  This is just cowardice. The council speaks on matters they weren’t specifically elected for and can not solve all the time. One such example is to condemn the one member who had the moral clarity to speak out against a genocide. 

I think Mark and his colleagues have their priorities backwards.  Mark says they saw Antisemitism and they called foul and that is leadership.  Allow me to just slightly tweek Marks own words to show him and all but one of his colleagues what leadership actually is.  

There is a line where genocide is real, that line has long since been crossed.  It is not a failure of leadership to say this out loud, its precisely what leadship is because there are those rare times when principle requires one to speak up in opposition to conduct that is simply wrong.  This is one of those occasions, and that is…. what Adams alone did.

  Forgive me for the lack of empathy I feel towards our political elites’ frustration that constituents are demanding moral clarity on what they think is just another war iin another hemisphere, but there is a reason the Gaza genocide is the moral litmus test of our time. (“This is not just about Gaza — it is about the future of international)

The suffering that has been inflicted upon 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom are children, using American supplied weapons, is one of the worst atrocities in modern history.  Children are intentionally being starved to death by the largest recipient of American foreign aid. (New testimonies reveal Israel’s starvation of Palestinians in Gaza is)  A near consensus among genocide scholars, experts in international humanitarian law, human rights organizations globally, in America, and in Israel has been reached (Leading genocide scholars organization says Israel is committing).  Israel is committing a genocide in the Gaza strip.  Genocide is the crime of crimes.  Nothing can justify it.  Even if Israels egregious racist depictions of Palestinians were true, and that all the atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and mass rape and human sheilds was acurate, (Kibbutz Be’eri on New York Times Sexual Assault Story – The Intercept Israel’s use of human shields in Gaza is widespread, sources say Joe Biden Keeps Repeating His False Claim That He Saw Pictures) It still does not justify genocide.  Not even another genocide justifys a genocide.  This is not complicated and the fact we all cant agree on at least this is incredibly disheartening.  

Anything other than unconditional opposition to this crime is wholly unacceptable and morally reprehensible.  Denying the Gaza genocide is equally as deplorable as holocaust denial, and perhaps worse because this one is ongoing!   All the attempts at victim blaming and justifying this crime is akin to holding Jewish partisans during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising responsible for the Nazi liquidation of the Ghetto.  It is Akin to holding the indigenous Americans responsible for their own destruction thanks to their victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn. It is to believe Nat Turner was responsible for all the deaths that occurred during his rebellion..  

Numerous experts of international law have stated South Africa’s case at the ICJ is the strongest case for genocide in the courts history (Expert calls South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel ‘strongest … Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza? We asked 5 legal and).  Israel proudly told the world exactly what they intended to do in Gaza, and then they did it (A Registry of Israeli Genocidal Statements on Gaza – Al-Haq). Hundreds and hundreds of genocidal statements from the highest levels of the Israeli government, military, media and civil society, right on down the hierarchy in the government and the military.  Rank and file members of the IDF openly  filming war crime after war crime and sharing it with pride on social media. 23 months of daily atrocities broadcast globally in real time. (Why are Israeli soldiers sharing snuff videos from their genocide in)

No crime in human history has been so thoroughly documented in real time by both its victims and perpetrators (Amnesty: Why we called Gaza ‘the most documented genocide in). Truly the first and god willing the only livestreamed genocide.Its often said that this conflict is too complicated to understand.  This is an excuse. This conflict is only complicated in that there is a lot of history that has occurred, but one does not need to know any of it. There is the occupier and the occupied, the oppressor and the oppressed (The Gaza Strip | The humanitarian impact of 15 years of blockade), those who perpetuate genocide and victims to genocide.  I understand the resistance to such a simple black and white understanding, but there is not two sides to genocide. The Palestinians are not perfect victims, a trait they share with all victims to genocide, including the Jews of Europe, but this does not mean they are not victims (Stern Gang | Jewish Resistance, Irgun & Terrorism – Britannica). The Nazis also spoke of “security concerns” which we all recognize justifies none of their crimes (Nazi Propaganda | Holocaust Encyclopedia).  Its no different when Israel does it.  There is no more excuses to not know.  There is no more ways to justify this.  Anyone still unable to unequivocally and unconditionally condemn Israels genocide in Gaza is a racist morally reprehensible monster or is willfully blind.  We must not accept either especially from our elected leaders.

Id like to believe we are better than this.  I once did, perhaps foolishly, but I believed there were certain lessons our species had finally figured out.  That despite the flaws of the international system I thought it would stop this. We have failed the people of Palestine.  Our failure is evident by the disarticulated eviscerated remains of the tens of thousands buried under Trumps future “riviera” and in the emaciated bodies or missing limbs of small children. (U.S.-run ‘Gaza Riviera’: Post-war redevelopment plan sees … – CNBC)  Never again must mean never again for all and never again is indeed now.  Israel is telling the world the west bank is next (Far-right Israeli Minister Calls for West Bank Annexation).  Will we act this time? 

Free Palestine! Inshalla!