#palestian solidarity day of action

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

United against Apartheid Israel.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.

[probablyasocialecologist]

As a Jew, I have felt completely alienated by the community that purports to represent me. In my earliest childhood memories, I recall  family members, Hebrew School teachers, and religious leaders telling me about the many promises of the state of Israel: a safe home for all Jews, a place – I was told – where we made the desert bloom. From as early as I can remember, I was taught by my family members and Hebrew School teachers that Jews need Israel because of the devastating losses during the Holocaust and enduring antisemitism. I went to Hebrew School three days a week, and remember feeling almost-constantly panicked about the potential for another Holocaust. The message was painfully clear: everyone hates Jews, and that’s why we need Israel. There was so much about Jewish history and culture I never learned in Hebrew School: our working-class roots and deep commitment to the labor and socialist movements both in Eastern Europe and in the U.S.; Sephardic and Mizrahi culture and customs; the history of Yiddish; even the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And of course, left out of most American Jewish education are the violent origins of the Jewish state: Israel’s dispossession and mass slaughter of Palestinians in 1948. The land on which Israel was built was not a barren desert made fertile by Jewish refugees and immigrants, but the Palestinians’ homeland, inhabited for millennia. When I began to learn the truth – that Israel violently expelled almost 1 million Palestinians to create the state of Israel – I felt completely shocked, and deeply betrayed by the adults whom I had trusted. It seemed – and I now know with certainty that it is – antithetical to Jewish values. Since I first learned about the Nakba, I’ve regularly felt alone in my religious community. There’s an assumption – from both the Jewish community and society at-large – that because we are Jews, we are also Zionists. Yet, so much of my political compass – including my commitment to anti-Zionism, actually comes from what I’ve learned from being a Jew. The same Hebrew school teachers who instructed me to love Israel also taught me Jewish songs like Olam Chesed Yibaneh (we will build this world with love) and Lo Yisa Goy (nation shall not lift up sword against nation). Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its subjugation of Palestians contradicts these Jewish tenets, yet in a majority of American Jewish communities, those of us who oppose Israeli colonialism are treated as traitors. It’s been confusing to feel both deeply connected to Judaism and Jewish values, and to also be told repeatedly by Jews and Zionists that I’m a self-hating Jew. It often makes me feel like I have no safe religious home. The only times I’ve felt like I’m free to practice my religion as an anti-Zionist, and to proudly declare that I’m an anti-Zionist because I’m Jewish, are when I’ve taken action with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist, Jewish organization that stands in solidarity with Palestinians. 

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

Flags of Palestine.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

Faces of protest.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

Palestine Solidarity.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

Israel is killing children.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.

[mvrvmfotogrvphs]

Faces of Palestine Solidarity.

JHB, South Africa. 28 October 2023.