Ilana Sumka

Oct 10, 2024 | jewschool.com | Ilana Sumka

What could the Israeli government have done differently after October 7? A number of people asked me this when I called for a ceasefire on October 18, 2023 and became an active member of Rabbis 4 Ceasefire. What else could Israel have done, other than go to war? I have an answer, and I’ve had one all along. And I’m ashamed that I haven’t been more vocal in expressing it.

Oct 18, 2023 | jewschool.com | Ilana Sumka

In 2008, when the Israeli army bombed Gaza in an attempt to eradicate Hamas, they killed more than a thousand Palestinians, most of them civilians. I watched the faces of children who had lost baby sisters and grandmothers, families whose entire apartment buildings had been flattened, and I wondered: who will these children grow up to be?

Jul 6, 2023 | jewschool.com | Ilana Sumka

Skip to content Staring at the rubble of a Palestinian home recently destroyed by the Israeli army in the West Bank town of Al-Walaja, Sam, a 36-year-old American Jew from Pittsburgh, shook his head. “It’s impossible to reconcile what I was raised to believe about Israel, and this demolished home.