Opinion: What Juneteenth teaches us about the struggle between Jews and Muslims

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The killings of starving Palestinians in Gaza, the attacks on Jews in Boulder, Colo., the ongoing conflict between Jews and Muslims around the world — all of it is devastating and I’m not so sure everyone sees it that way. As a Black American Jew who lived in Israel for a year, I do see it that way.

What we are witnessing is a humanitarian crisis that echoes the horrors of American slavery and the unfinished struggle for civil rights. Despite slavery having ended in 1865, Black Americans are still being beaten and murdered because of the color of our skin, federal initiatives once meant to bring about equity are being ripped away, and many American children, whether Black, Jewish, Muslim or other, are experiencing discrimination, marginalization and alienation. Yet I remain hopeful.

As we approach Juneteenth, a holiday that marks delayed freedom for Black Americans, I reflect on how peace and justice — both in the U.S. and abroad — must be built through heartfelt empathy, genuine connections and a shared humanity. Without that, there will only be more pain.

When I lived in Israel, it was not long after the Gulf War. My apartment in the Negev desert sat just 25 miles from Gaza and 55 miles from Jerusalem. I worked there as a journalist and in university communications, and befriended Jews and Muslims, Ethiopians and Russians, Palestinians and Black Bedouins.

I had a unique perspective, living in the Holy Land as a Black American Jew. I was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago by a Baptist mother who had spent her childhood in Alabama unable to drink from the same water fountains as white people and not allowed to be educated in the same schools they were. Upon becoming a public school teacher in the North, she sent me to a Catholic school where I was often the only Black in my honors classes. She also taught me to remember that racism is everywhere.

It was through those lenses that I saw how historical trauma can live thick in the air, inherited and sometimes unconscious. It transcends the Black American experience. It is also the Jewish experience and the Muslim experience.

One day in Israel, out walking with Jewish friends, they whispered how we should cross the street. I soon realized it was to avoid passing a dark-skinned woman wearing a burqa. My own affliction kicked in. What I saw were white friends afraid to walk past a Black woman, just as I had sometimes watched white people in the U.S. cross the street to avoid passing me.

But in Israel, my Jewish friends didn’t cross the street because the woman was Black; it was because she was Arab. They were afraid she could have a knife under her loose-fitting dress, or worse, a bomb. Suicide bombing incidents were rare; however, even one can instill grave fear.

Fear passes through generations, shaping identities and hardening worldviews. Israeli children grow up learning about pogroms and the Holocaust, and experiencing bomb shelters. Palestinian children grow up in conditions shaped by displacement, military checkpoints and unexpected air raids. Each side sees the other as a threat. They are locked in a conflict where both are victims.

That year in the Negev confirmed a truth I already knew from my life in America: Peace can be built by getting to know your neighbor.

Despite my religion, Palestinians called me “cousin,” had me over for dinner, invited me to weddings and offered to give me a tour of the conditions in the West Bank. Maybe it was due to my melanin, my profession or my non-threatening nature, but either way, these were not invitations they’d make so easily to other Jews, whether American or Israeli. And by the number of Jews who told me not to go into a Palestinian’s home, I know most would’ve declined any invitation. While there are some Jews and Muslims marching together for peace, true integration of these people with a shared ancestor is minimal. They live parallel lives, even in the United States.

Integration isn’t perfect, as we know from Black American history, but it can make transformation possible. When people share schools, neighborhoods and workplaces, we begin to see each other’s humanity. Sociologists call this the contact hypothesis. Under the right conditions, proximity leads to empathy.

We need to increase that kind of contact there and here. America is still too segregated. My high school went from mostly white with few Black teachers to majority students of color with a Black principal. That’s not real progress. Neighborhoods we move into, they move out of. In America, DEI programs are under siege, books are being banned and discussions of racial injustice are being silenced. Antisemitism is spiking and so is Islamophobia. Jews are attacked in public. Muslims are surveilled and scapegoated. We all know pain, but too often we retreat into separate camps, letting it simmer.

Perhaps Black Americans, knowing our shared memories of pain, can be bridge builders. After all, Black people come in all faiths, including Jewish and Muslim. We know a thing or two about intersectionality and coexistence.

While Jews and Blacks remember marching arm in arm during the Civil Rights Movement over shared struggles like redlining and employment discrimination, we must also remember that solidarity is more than nostalgia. It is a living practice that takes ongoing work. Today, many Black Americans also feel an affinity with Palestinians, recognizing the shared experiences of occupation and overpolicing. These solidarities are not in opposition; they can coexist. Coexistence takes connection, conversation and community.

This Juneteenth, as we honor the long road to Black liberation, let’s consider whether there is a future where Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, can live in peace. Let’s consider how it will be the result of humanitarian contact, of listening and of choosing to see each other not as enemies but as neighbors, cousins, and co-builders of a different kind of world. After all, peace and justice don’t arrive overnight, but can begin with an understanding of our shared humanity.

Sheree R. Curry is the co-president of the National Association of Black Journalists Minnesota (NABJ-MN), formerly known as the Twin Cities Black Journalists. She also wears many other hats, including covering news about corporate America for national media outlets. Follow her @shereecurry on LinkedIn.