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| Let me fight for you. Let me kill for you. I represent ALL Jews who agree with me. |
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| This NC Jew stands with Gaza |
In April 2024, during Passover (Hebrew Pesach), a group of American rabbis approached a border crossing in Israel. Affiliated with Rabbis for Ceasefire (rabbis4ceasefire.com), the group joined Jewish Israeli activists attempting to deliver food to Gazans.
It had been seven months since Israel launched a full blown genocide, claiming their target was the Netanyahu-funded, protected, and enabled political party "Hamas" [who, as occupied victims invaded and oppressed by the militant state of Israel, spearheaded by newer arrivals of Ashkenazi/European invaders, were exercising their legal right to resist occupation by whatever means were available to them, only to have Israeli propagandists claim that their motive was not resistance but "Jew hatred" because they are "mad Arabs" and non-human beings or any kind of "people"] beginning Oct. 7, 2023.
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| Author Notre Dame Prof. Atalia Omer |
One of the American rabbis told reporters at Democracy Now! (democracynow.org) that this was the only way she could imagine marking Passover, a Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of liberation from oppression and slavery.
Marching to the gates of Gaza with food for starving Palestinians was consistent with Passover’s imperative to invite the hungry to every table.
As of April 2, 62% of American Jews believe Israel has responded to Hamas’ resistance in an “acceptable” way.
- [That means, most Jews in the U.S. condone genocide, are alright with killing babies, war crimes, starving millions, terrifying tens of millions, risking a nuclear war, the Russian annihilation of Ukraine and the Chinese takeover of Taiwan, as the U.S. Pentagon, CIA, NSA, NSC, and other secretive alphabet agencies stick their tentacles to promote war around the world, while millions of Palestinians starve, are forcibly relocated, terrified, killed, and irrevocably traumatized by war, and yet still wonder why students and others condemn their Zionism, imperialism, and this settler colonial project being forced on the Middle East.]
Younger people
Many of those young people are involved in the variety of Jewish organizations that have mobilized for a cease-fire since October, such as IfNotNowMovement.org and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP.org).
Public attention has focused on pro-Palestinian campus protests against Israeli war crimes and American complicity under Genocide Joe Biden's administration, which included many Jewish students – I am a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which formed in response to concerns about freedom of speech for U.S. students mobilizing for Palestinian rights.
- VIDEO: Bizarre moment Biden thinks Hamas hostage is in White House crowd (Daily Mail)
But as a peace and religion scholar, I know that some U.S. Jews’ involvement in Palestinian solidarity movements began years before the current war.
In my ethnographic research, which included in-depth interviews and participant observation work, activists emphasized that they were inspired to act because of their Jewish identity and values, not in spite of them.
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| American and Israeli rabbis from Rabbis for Ceasefire march toward the Gaza Strip with food aid for civilians during Passover on April 26, 2024. © AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo |
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Journey toward activism
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| Orthodox Jews take moral stand for what's right |
Many interviewees came to activism for Palestinian rights after wrestling with how to square their beliefs and ideals with the reality of Israeli policies they do not support – policies that they feel are often invoked in their name.
My 2019 book, Days of Awe, examines American Jewish critics of Israeli policy and Zionism – support for a Jewish state in the Middle East [based on European imperialism and invasion-migration plus illegal Israeli occupation to force a settler colonial project on an indigenous population].
Some activists focused on the Palestinian territories Israel has illegally occupied since 1967, which they consider a departure from the country’s ideals as a Jewish democracy.
Others found themselves in complete disagreement with the idea of Zionism, given how the creation of the new state necessitated Palestinian displacement.
Their activism has taken different shapes: from protests in the West Bank against the occupation, to forming anti-Zionist (anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist) synagogues in the U.S., to rewriting Jewish liturgy to reflect solidarity with Palestinians and other oppressed peoples.
For example, one interviewee in his mid-20s shared an experience from a 2008 Birthright trip to Israel, a free tour designed to [indoctrinate, guilt-trip, and feed participants a narrative that must never be questioned to] strengthen young Americans’ connection with the country and its settler colonial project.
The trip coincided with Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, which lasted about three weeks and resulted in about a dozen Israeli deaths, approximately 1,400 Palestinian deaths, and thousands of people displaced.
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| Gathering in Grand Central Station, NY |
A tour guide was reluctant to respond to the young man’s questions about the conflict. This prompted the student, upon his return to campus in the U.S., to read about the Palestinian experiences of the Nakba – meaning the “Catastrophe” (Holocaust caused by Zionist Jewish Israelis on Arabs) in Arabic – of 1948, the year European (Ashkenazi) Jews invaded holding the Balfour Declaration (bought by the Rothschilds banking family) to establish a nominal "democracy" with no constitution and no rights for non-Jews.
This has come to be called the "state" of Israel, which has not yet been established because no constitution can be ratified until more Jews migrate and become colonizers or Jews will be a minority in their own new "state," but was when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced off their lands and caused to flee.
This interviewee and others say their journeys toward activism began because their understanding of Jewish values is inconsistent with what Israel is doing in the name of Jews’ safety and privilege, [European white supremacist] and special status.
It was also a journey of “unlearning” or critique – challenging narratives that emphasize the concept of Jewish return to Israel or that downplay Palestinian displacement.
They were tapping into Jewish tradition in new ways – what I refer to as “critical caretaking.”
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| IfNotNow protests AIPAC (American-Israel Political Action Committee) 2017 conference DC |
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Take IfNotNow (ifnotnowmovement.org), an American Jewish group opposed to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The movement was born during Israel's 2014 War on Hamas, when a group of young Jews organized a public recitation of the mourner’s kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.
By reciting both Jewish and Palestinian victims’ names, they hoped to use Jewish tradition to challenge the devaluation of Palestinian lives.
When I asked Rebekah – a pseudonym for a college student in the American South whom I interviewed for my book – how she understood her Jewishness, she told me: “I have always maintained that the basis for my activism was my Jewish ideals, the radical equality I had absorbed at home.”
Shadow of history
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| Hostage Mia, French-Israeli Ashkenazi Jew, raver who was shot in arm (Inside Edition) |
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For Rebekah and many other American Jews, the cultural memory of the Holocaust [they were indoctrinated with from a young age, as it was pounded into most of us with exaggerations that cannot and must not ever be questioned or one risks being called a "holocaust denier" for that questioning], and the common refrain “Never Again,” inspires their activism for Palestinian rights.
“Growing up in Hebrew schools, you grow up with the nightmarish Holocaust films,” she stressed. “The conclusion of this education should have been clear: ‘You can’t do it to another group of people!’”
This lesson is reflected in the cry “Never again to anyone,” heard at demonstrations over the past few months.
Another interviewee likewise asserted that her solidarity with Palestinians is grounded in the legacy of the Holocaust: “For me, understanding the Holocaust was hard because of the enormity of it – it happened because masses of people made a conscious decision to do nothing. I didn’t want to do nothing.”
For these interviewees, discriminatory or violent policies contradict their understanding of Jewish values, which they assert by standing in solidarity with Palestinians.
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| Ceasefire in Gaza: Miami office of U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, 10/17/23 (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) |
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Another interviewee told me: “I consider myself a spiritual Jew. I am able to separate Zionism from Judaism [imperialism from religion], and I believe in equality. Because I am Jewish, I protest – I am informed by values of humanism, which is the main framework for organizing. The experience of doing solidarity work actually strengthened my Jewish identity.…My Judaism translates into my commitment to uphold universal humanist values.”
Here and now
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| I just want to dance with my IDF friends. Peace! |
In 2017, several dozen Americans gathered with other activists in the southern hills of Hebron, in the West Bank. They established what they called a “sumud” camp – a Palestinian concept denoting steadfastness – to protest the Israeli military’s decision to declare the area a “closed military zone,” meaning Palestinians must leave.
The activists wore shirts exclaiming “Occupation is Not My Judaism.” Occupation, they say, dehumanizes Palestinians and Jews alike – so they are seeking their own liberation, too. Therefore, their “critical caretaking” is not just about underscoring what Judaism is not.
It is also about rewriting what they believe Judaism is.
For example, many of these organizations decenter Zionism’s role in Jewish texts and liturgies.
Rather than emphasizing the idea that the “Jewish home[land]” is in the historical region of Palestine and Israel, some emphasize “doykayt,” Yiddish for “hereness”: the concept that Jews’ true home is wherever they are in the world.
- Apparently, the other Jewish homeland wasn't good enough for them or they never heard of a place where they are welcome to create a utopia and live forever, proving the supremacy of Judaism. That place is called the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) in Russia.
Doykayt is just one example of how these activists embrace often-overlooked aspects of Jewish history, including marginalized voices such as Arab Jews and Ethiopian Jews, as they discover new ways to live their Jewish values.
Through their activism, they are trying to convey their understanding that Jews cannot be free until Palestinians are free.
This article is republished from The Conversation [edited and enhanced by Wisdom Quarterly], a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing facts and trustworthy analysis to help readers make sense of the complex world.
- For many American Jews protesting for Palestinians, activism is a journey rooted in their Jewish values (theconversation.com)
- Nazi genocides of Jews and Roma were entangled from the start – and so are their efforts at Holocaust remembrance today
- A brief history of the US-Israel ‘special relationship’ shows how connections have shifted since long before the 1948 founding of the Jewish state
- Atalia Omer is affiliated with the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Notre Dame and Tzedek Chicago.
- Atalia Omer, University of Notre Dame The Conversation via MSN.com; Shauna Schwartz, Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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