A campaign to rejoin the Jewish history of resistance to genocide with those currently struggling for survival, self-determination, emancipation and liberation

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network's Remembrance Campaign aims to challenge the presentation of the Nazi Genocide in which the history of the decimation of Jews is disconnected from the millions of other victims who perished in the same war, even in the same camps. It also challenges the exceptionalizing, falsifying and exploiting of this memory in an effort to justify and dismiss the colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine.  Such exceptionalizing, along with the violence committed by a sanctified Israel in the name of all Jews, isolates the Jewish experiences of racism, displacement and mass murder, and separates Europe's history of Jewish persecution from other peoples' experiences with-and struggles against-persecution, racism and genocide. In opposition to this separatism, for us the history of the Nazi genocide demands that we never stand aside as any people faces such violence. And, far from an exception, the racism, sadism and dehumanization that facilitated the Nazi genocide, and governments' collaboration with it, has long roots in Europe's history of imperial conquest, slavery, genocide and Christian supremacy.

Genocide-definedas the systematic decimation of a national, religious, racial, political orethnic group-has decimated individual lives, families, and communities, andtherefore also history, language and culture. The weapons and technology ofsystematic collective violence modernizes, but the decimation of people andways of living remains constant. Sometimes the timeframes are short, at other times they are extended.Some are carefully calculated, others are "collateral damage" incurred as aresult of the barbaric acquisition of resources and political power.  They all result in dehumanization,subjugation, objectification, and ultimately they threaten the existence ofpeoples, cultures and ways of living.

Thestated intention of defining, codifying and condemning the act of genocideafter WWII was to prevent its recurrence. In practice, acts of genocide aremore likely to be condemned when it serves western interests. Conversely, actsof genocide that would expose western interests and dominance tend to bedisguised, silenced and ignored. The use and misuse of genocide in Darfur byZionist institutions and the west, particularly the United States, is onecontemporary example.  The historyin which it is rooted - and therefore western colonial complicity - is whitedout, while the presentation of the current atrocities is used to instigatefurther violence against people of Islamic faith in other parts of theworld.  In this way, the sufferingof genocidal violence becomes a political tool to promote more of the sameelsewhere.

Europe'spolitical and cultural elite have never come clean on its genocidal colonialhistory which enabled Nazism; rather, the Nazi memory is used to justify theirprofitable de facto support for the ongoing colonization and ethniccleansing of Palestine. Zionism, a reactionary response to Europeanantisemitism, has become a cornerstone for extending western "post-colonial"domination. Through Zionist state building, Jews have been recognized asWestern in return for their contribution to the maintenance of Westerndomination globally by assuming the power of the European colonialnation-state. The state of Israel has been integrated into "western leadership"and, in addition to serving its own specific interests, serves more broadly asa western outpost of political, military, and nuclear power in the East.

BecauseIsrael is integral to the ‘leadership' of the West, it helps determine withwhat savagery all of us are governed, and extends and enhances US military andpolitical power.  Thus what Israelhas done in Palestine is not something ‘over there'.  Palestinian blood is on the hands of all the ‘democratic'western governments.  They havehanded a goodly sum of Western tax dollars for Israel to make war from Lebanonto Gaza; we have paid for nuclear, chemical and other weapons, for building andrebuilding infrastructure Israel destroys, for a global network of spies andmilitia training, and for the racist propaganda and brutality ofIslamophobia.  This reinforces andstrengthens the racism and exploitation experienced by immigrant working classcommunities of color living and working in western countries. We will not allowthis brutality and imperialism to present itself as a struggle againstantisemitism. Therefore, the struggle for the liberation of Palestine isintegral to the liberation of all persecuted communities, since it is a victoryagainst racism, xenophobia and war. Conversely, each victory against racism, exploitation and war anywhereis a victory for Palestine.

Theincorporation of European Jews as white, and the exclusion of Muslims, Roma andall immigrants of color, and the reconstitution of Christian Europe as"Judeo-Christian," rather than transforming the history of the Nazi genocide,creates a new racist divide in which African, Arab and Asian people, andespecially Muslims, are targets of racism/Islamophobia.  Jews must then choose between theUS/European empire building and state power that we are invited into, and thetransformation of those relations of power that perpetuate every violence. Thisis truer of Jews of European decent, but is also true for Jews of African, WestAsian and Arab descent in relationship to Palestine/Zionism. Our collectiveprotection depends on solidarity with each other, and not exploiting some forthe benefit of others.

Itis time to spell out loud and clear that, while Jews in Europe sought refugefrom racist violence, the Israeli state manipulated this tragedy by using it asa vehicle to gain State power for itself. Since its creation in 1948, the Stateof Israel has misrepresented itself as a haven for Jews escapingoppression.  Zionism, an example oflate nineteenth century European notions of ethnic nationalism, remained aminority movement among Jews in Europe, even as the early Zionist colonizerslaid the foundations for what would be called a "Jewish state" on Palestinianland.  The Zionist idea of a Jewishstate gained momentum with the rise of Nazism in Germany, and it gainedimperial support as the British Empire lost its ability to maintain its Mandatein Palestine. Following World War II and the grief and fury of Jewish peopleworldwide, the establishment of the state of Israel in historic Palestine wasbilled as a permanent "solution" to the problem of antisemitism - as allambitious separatists do, it reduced all social problems to this one problem;the truth of anti-Semitism hide the greater truth of how many of us are underattack, how many are struggling to assert our humanity, how liberation fromevery form of exploitation and oppression is an international rather than aJewish problem only.

Thetragic scope of the Nazi genocide was viewed as justification of pre-warZionist claims that anti-Jewish hatred was inevitable as long as Jews existedas a minority group within other nations. In the years following the creationof the state, Israel launched projects of nation building that attempted theerasure of the diversity among Jews from many lands, and established itsaudacious lying practice of speaking on behalf of Jews worldwide. The Israelipresumption to speak for all Jews was hotly contested in the 1950s, inparticular by Jews in the United States. But as Israel increasingly connected Jewish identity with Western militarypower, Jews generally had come to identify with the state of Israel and did notchallenge its claim to represent global Jewish interests.

Fromits beginning, Israeli statehood has presumed the link with the Nazi genocide("The Holocaust"). However, by now, a large body of scholarly literature hasshown that in the pre-WW II years, Zionist leaders in Palestine dispassionatelyviewed the persecution of Jews in Europe as an opportunity to promote theirpolitical goals. Many Zionist leaders capitalized on, but did not oppose, thepersecution of Jews in order to bolster their case for a Jewish state. Withinmonths of the Nazi takeover in January 1933, Zionist leaders began negotiatingwith Nazi officials for the emigration of "only the best" of German Jews toPalestine. With the onset of war in 1939, other Zionists initiated contactswith fascist leaders in Italy, in order to coordinate plans against theircommon British enemy. Even during genocidal assaults on Jewish communities,Zionist leaders sought to cooperate with Nazi officials, and showed themselveswilling to sacrifice "ordinary" European Jews in order to secure therelease of prominent Jewish Zionists.

Zionistleaders were highly selective about which Jews were welcome in the futurestate. Guided by an antisemitic belief that landless life in the JewishDiaspora led to physical, moral, and spiritual decline, and that the genocidewas made possible by Jewish weakness, Zionist officials expressed shame aboutJews fleeing to Palestine as refugees, and consistently favored Jews who choseto come to Palestine out of an ideological commitment to build a new state.Historical records abound with statements by leading Zionists who expressedconcern that refugees who suffered from an "exile mentality," whomthey considered "scum," would "poison" Zionism (Tom Segev, TheSeventh Million).Even in the late 1950s, when the full extent of the attacks on Jews was known,Golda Meir (then Israeli foreign minister) questioned whether Polish officialsshould be told not to send sick or disabled Jewish survivors to Israel, sincethey would be a drain on resources. Such statements about the unworthiness ofEuropean Jewry echo the Nazi concept of Lebensunwertes Leben ("Lifeunworthy of life"), the eugenics-inspired justification for the murder ofdisabled people, Jews, Roma, and millions of others.

Giventhis history, we must utterly reject Israel's propaganda to stand as the onlysafe haven, and as a victory, for Jews against racism and fascism. Likewise, werefuse the long record of Israel's manipulation of the Nazi genocide to justifythe racist, systematic oppression and exploitation of Palestinian people.Jewish people can no longer permit the exploitation of the legacy, memory, andhistory of the Nazi genocide of Jews to go unchallenged.

TheIsraeli state, using emotional capital accumulated to claim "special" status asvictims of the Nazi genocide, has created a tiered system of Israelicitizenship, which legalizes discrimination against Palestinians and specialrights for Jewish citizens. Zionist brazen lies and manipulation of the effectsof Jewish persecution become a license to kill, and to inflict upon Palestinianpeople torture, displacement, mass arrest, confinement, and denial of water,food, electricity, medical treatment, education and a livelihood. It hasallowed Israel, while claiming to be a safe haven for Jews, to create apermanent state of emergency, where all critics are enemies and the rule of lawis suspended.

Nogenocidal violence in any form, expression or degree is acceptable.  What is required everywhere is itsuniversal condemnation. There are no hierarchies of suffering or worthiness forlife and liberty. Israeli academic Yehuda Elkana, director of the Institute forthe History of Science and Ideas of the University of Tel-Aviv says: "FromAuschwitz came, symbolically, two peoples: a minority that proclaims this willnever happen again and a scared and anxious majority who proclaims that thiswill never happen to us again." The Israeli state historically and continually asserts the latter. Weassert the former, along with most of the world, including so many of thecommunities and societies that have suffered and resisted genocide.

TheInternational Jewish Anti-Zionist Network is a product of Jewish histories ofresistance. We resist the anti-Semitism Jews have suffered, including at thehands of Zionism; and we resist the insidious violence perpetrated against thePalestinian people in our name that decimates lives, culture and land. Wereject entirely Israel's claim to speak on behalf of worldwide Jewry and thenotion that protection is found through isolation and domination. Ourcollective and long-term survival, self-determination, and emancipation canonly be found by joining with the liberation struggles of our time. IJAN's wholeheartedsupport of the Palestinian cause is rooted in our abhorrence of racism,colonialism and mass violence, including histories of prejudice and violenceagainst Jews.  The InternationalJewish anti-Zionist Network stands in the universal tradition of struggle forhuman dignity and survival, and in solidarity with the Palestinian struggleagainst Israel and the governments which support and finance its racistviolence. We stand with the many who struggle every day, everywhere for theirright to live a life worth living.