Ben Green is a former high school teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area who has lived in Carbondale for six years with his wife, who grew up here, and three children. He now works for Brass Taxes©, helping freelance creatives file income tax. I first noticed Green at the Ceasefire Now RFV rally in Glenwood Springs on Jan. 21. He and his sons, Sagan and Izzy, quietly held signs denouncing oppression and war crimes, and urged people to educate themselves about the history of the Palestinian people.
What I didn’t notice until I took a closer look at my photographs from the protest was the logo on Green’s hat — the letters “AJC” and a graphic of the Star of David between two mountain peaks, which stands for the Aspen Jewish Congregation.
A week after the Glenwood Springs rally, Green consented to an interview to talk about why he chose to wear that hat on that day, what the conflict means to him and why he is speaking up for the Palestinian people. Our conversation lasted for over an hour and has been edited here for length and clarity.
Amy Hadden Marsh: Talk about why you chose to wear that particular hat to the ceasefire rally.
Ben Green: My personal answer is complicated. It was important to me to be “out” as a Jew. In particular at the ceasefire rally, I wanted to be “out’ as a Jew because I think there are a lot of people, both within the leftists organizing around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also within the Jewish community, who assume that all Jews have this unified opinion that we might call an uncritical approach to Israeli geopolitical operations.
I wanted to wear the hat as a message but also as a reminder to the other people at the rally to remember that it’s important to make a distinction between criticism of the Israeli government and military policy, and the Jewish people as a whole. There’s a lot of nuance that leftists miss when they criticize Israel, and a lot of ways they inadvertently or deliberately perpetuate antisemitism in their rhetoric and organizing. At the same time, like the sign I made that my older son, Sagan, was holding …
AHM: The war crimes sign.
BG: We can simultaneously recognize that, yes, Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 was a war crime. Yes, it was terrorism. No, that doesn’t justify what Israel is currently doing in Gaza, and Hamas’ war crimes weren’t justified by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank or its treatment of Gaza. Pain does not justify pain; war crimes do not justify war crimes.
One of the criticisms I hear a lot about calling for a ceasefire is that Hamas will not respect a ceasefire. And the reality is, that’s true. They won’t. But you agree to a ceasefire because you’re taking a stand on your actions and what you believe is the right thing to do. And you do it, knowing that if Hamas continues with violence that’s tragic and wrong, that still doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t agree to a ceasefire because that’s the right thing to do.
I think that a lot of people who are critical of Palestinian liberation movements point at the fact that they are currently led by a terrorist organization; but you can’t make Palestinian liberation and their right to sovereign control of their territory, their right to life and access to food and water and electricity contingent on their going about getting their liberation in the way that you want. People still deserve freedom even when they go about it in the wrong way.
AHM: What were your feelings when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, and about Israel’s response?
BG: I remember when I first started hearing about it, I was actually nauseous the whole day and just heartbroken. I have family in Israel and I have been to the town that was attacked when I was a teenager. So for the first day, I actually had to stop. At a certain point, I was, like, I can’t look at the news. I can’t be on social media. I just can’t take this. Then, once I started using social media again, I spent a few days really trying to provide context for people.
AHM: What do you mean by that?
BG: I remember seeing a lot of people in different forums online who were getting very close to openly calling for genocide in Gaza, like, Israel should just turn the entire area to powder. Problem solved. But, [the conflict] didn’t start on Oct. 7. It didn’t start in 1948. This goes back farther than that, so basically I was like, let’s start 5,000 years ago and just trace the whole history of this place.
AHM: The International Justice Court recently ruled on South Africa’s case against Israel and stopped short of calling for a ceasefire. Some human rights groups in the U.S. have sued President Biden, [Secretary of State] Antony Blinken and [Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin stating that the U.S. has breached its obligations to prevent genocide [www.tinyurl.com/Intercept-human-rights] . What are your thoughts about these two cases?
BG: The U.S. has a storied history of funding and training and supporting a whole litany of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocides all over the world. If you get to the point where you’re needing to parse, “Does this thing technically meet the criteria for genocide?” That’s already too close to genocide, and the U.S. shouldn’t have any part in it. The U.S. provides a lot of military aid to a lot of countries that it shouldn’t. I oppose all of that, including Israel.
AHM: How are you talking about this to your boys?
BG: I try to talk to them about it in small bits. I pay attention to how interested they are in the topic. [My wife] and I have always had this position that if they ask us questions, we try our best to answer them honestly in a way that’s as age-appropriate as we can.
AHM: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
BG: I think it is important for Jews to be taking a leadership role in demanding a ceasefire. You don’t spend 70 to 80 years saying “never again”; never again means never for anybody. I think all people who are survivors of genocide should be in solidarity with each other on these issues.