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We are calling for a week of coordinated actions across the world that confront Zionism and support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) call from Palestine. We are therefore mobilizing practicing and secular Jews across the globe to honor the second intifada and the high holidays by taking action to divest economically, politically, emotionally and spiritually from Zionism and from Israel.

UPDATE: Due to a growing interest in participation in launch in regions across the globe, we are extending the Week of Action to a Month of Action (October 1 - October 31). 

Click here to find out more, to add your ideas for what these actions might look like and to bring additional ideas.

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En juin 2010, les deux extrêmes du spectre politique juif US vont se trouver en rivalité à un moment historique. Alors qu’Israël et le mouvement sioniste se battent pour garder leur influence d’un siècle sur l’esprit des juifs, un nouveau projet émerge qui s’écarte du sionisme et adhère à un engagement renouvelé pour une humanité partagée.

Les 19 et 22 juin, juste avant le Forum social US, les juifs d’Amérique du nord se rassembleront à Detroit pour défier le racisme, le colonialisme et l’impérialisme ; d’abord et avant tout, en participant à la lutte pour vaincre le sionisme et décoloniser la Palestine. L’Assemblée des juifs états-uniens 2010, "S’opposer au racisme et à l’apartheid israélien", tombe à un moment où il y a grande urgence à construire sur les récents succès du mouvement de solidarité avec la Palestine, et où les entreprises et le gouvernement des Etats-Unis continuent de commettre de graves injustices en Palestine - sans parler de celles dans leur propres communautés.

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The 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews, a national conference held in Detroit in late June, began at an unusual hour for a Jewish conclave: late on a Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t the most accommodating move for participants who observe the Sabbath, but then, the conference’s organizers may not have expected any: This was the first major gathering of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Given that the term “anti-Zionist” is an epithet to many in the organized American Jewish community, one might assume that any American Jew who’d schlep to Michigan to discuss strategies for “decolonizing Palestine” would fall outside that community’s religious and cultural margins as well.

So, it came as a surprise when, at 11:30 on that first Saturday night, after an exhausting opening session, about a quarter of the 200 conference-goers, overwhelmingly under 30, gathered to celebrate havdalah, the ceremony that ushers out the Sabbath. As they swayed in a circle singing “Lo Yisa Goy,” a Hebrew folksong—“and into plowshares beat their swords, nations shall learn war no more”—the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network felt for a moment like Jewish summer camp. Many Jewish community leaders would not have been enthusiastic about the scene. And, in echoes that reverberated throughout the conference, neither were some leaders of the Jewish Anti-Zionist Network.

A growing cohort of young Jews actively involved in Jewish life—often in alternative realms like independent minyans, the Yiddish-revival movement, and social-justice organizations—are taking left-wing positions on Israel that leave them feeling marginalized even in the Jewish communities they call home. Ideologically, they range from those who couch their politics in the language of international law and ultimately favor a two-state solution to those who use the more radical language of anti-imperialism and insist that true democracy can never happen within a Jewish state—with countless shades in between. By flirting with the labels “non-Zionist” and “anti-Zionist” without abandoning other traditional affiliations, they have crossed a line into territory where there exists no well-marked space on the American Jewish ideological map.

Into this vacuum came the first conference of the two-year-old International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, a still-obscure organization (though one now on the watch list of some mainstream Jewish organizations) with a moniker echoing those of long-defunct groups, like the Jewish Communist Labor Bund, that tethered Jewish specificity to the international left. For many of the young Jews who turned out in Detroit—most en route to the U.S. Social Forum, a major activist expo that was held in the city later that week—the Assembly seemed to promise a distinctly Jewish space in which to engage in or try on the ideas that Zionism does in fact equal racism and that only a one-state solution can mean justice for Palestinians—regardless of whether they take such a hard line in their day-to-day lives.

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Here are some of the press articles & letters arising out of the Never Again - For Anyone tour, beginning with a major piece on Dr Hajo Meyer in the prestigious Huffington Post An Ethical Tradition Betrayed. 

 

The tour began in Scotland - the Glasgow Herald published Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’ but not IJAN's letter in response. The Jewish Chronicle, in one of a number of attacks on the meeting in the House of Commons on Holocaust Memorial Day, wrote Gaza ethnic cleansing talk attacked as ‘an appalling offence’, and did not publish our letter, nor would the Independent on Sunday publish Yael Kahn's letter.

 

The Camden New Journal wrote a very positive article Auschwitz survivor, 86, takes on the protesters, as did Press TV Auschwitz survivor sees Nazi acts in Israel.  The letters column of the Camden New Journal has carried more attacks, and more letters defending Dr Meyer.  And finally East London Lines reported on the "controversial" Goldsmiths meeting Auschwitz survivor sees Nazi acts in Israel.

 

For a video of Dr Meyer's speech on the tour, please click here.  And for three of Dr Eid's speeches, made especially for this tour, please click here & here & here.  See more on the Never Again website.

 

Following the House of Commons meeting, a number of people who had offered testimony on the genocide of their communities, are continuing to work together.  We met at a full-day meeting (no Zionists allowed!). From this came a collective process to challenge the exclusivity of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, and instead speak of genocide rather than holocaust; to make explicit the genocides and ethnic cleansings historically and today; and to confront Zionism and the many forms of racism we all face.  We will soon be giving you a report of this effort, and asking for your input.

 

Contributing to the heroic Palestinian Resistance, this growing awareness will incidentally precipitate the abolition of the Zionist ideology and its hideous manifestation, just like slavery or Nazism were abolished.

The Palestinian Resistance and its allies represent an exemplary model of diversity and cooperation across borders, race, age, economic circumstances, religion or nationality.

In essence, the Palestinian Resistance is a model of inclusion, the radical contrary of the exclusivist Zionist ideology.

Contrary to the gory Zionist project, our true and sincere aspirations are long lasting Peace, Justice and Freedom.  For us, this will restore of the true foundations of Palestinian society.

After almost a century of unrepentant Zionist terrorism in Palestine, all doubts have vanished: The only real road to Peace is a full and unconditional Liberation of Palestine, liberation from this supremacist ideology and liberation from the perpetrators. That will inevitably mean a return to the original, peaceful society Palestine was before the Zionist invasion.

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This week, thousands of people from dozens of countries are attempting to reach Gaza to break the siege and march alongside Palestinians who have been organising inside the territory.

Each of the individuals traveling with the Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, or other delegations represents perhaps hundreds of others who could not make the journey in person, and who are marking the event with demonstrations and commemorations, visits to their elected officials, and media campaigns.

Against this flowering of activism, Zionism is struggling to rejuvenate its dwindling base of support. Multi-million dollar programmes aimed at recruiting and Zionising young American Jews are struggling to compete against organisations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which run not on money but principled commitment to human equality.

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There are many problems with IJAN, which lead me to doubt the purposes of the group. I first question whether they are a Palestinian solidarity group or yet another group that seeks to shield and preserve Jewish power both in Palestine and in the U.S.

In this writer's opinion, Jews – if they are acting in a group that represents Jews in the peace movement – should first and foremost challenge what Akiva Eldar and J. J. Goldberg, among others, call the "Jewish lobby" – the powerful people and institutions (and their rank-and-file supporters) who dominate the US discourse and policy regarding Jews and Israel. Often, these are the very people behind the charge of "self-hating Jews" (and for non-Jews, "anti-Semites") about whom Rebecca Tumposky, national organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, complains. Yet, nowhere in her article does Ms. Tumposky show a disposition to directly do that.

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Jewish Anti-Zionists and Palestinian groups seek to influence U.S. Social Forum. “We are fighting Zionism's appropriation of our identity.“

-Emily Katz Kishawi, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Historically, Jews are overrepresented in progressive causes, so it's no surprise they are likely to be overrepresented at the U.S. Social Forum being held June 22-26 in Detroit.
What is surprising is that the largest organized Jewish presence will be that of Jewish anti-Zionists.

“The 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism & Israeli Apartheid“ will be held in Detroit just prior to the Social Forum. The four-day Assembly is expected to draw 150-200 self-identified anti-Zionist Jews from across the country.
According to its website, the Assembly, running June 19-22, intends to “gather together as anti-Zionist Jewish activists committed to social justice and to challenging racism, colonialism and imperialism -first and foremost, by contributing to efforts to overcome Zionism and decolonize Palestine.“

Following their Assembly, Jewish antiZionist activists will do their best -through workshops, networking and being a visible presence -to engage in their agenda the hundreds of groups attending the U.S. Social Forum.

The San Francisco area-based International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), a major force behind the Assembly, also is represented on the U.S. Social Forum national planning committee as is the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, another group committed to, as posted on its website, “ending Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestine.“

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network has a goal of “making Palestine a part of all social justice movements.“ It lists 70 workshops comprising a “Palestine track“ at the U.S. Social Forum. It will host a four-day Palestinian Tent, sponsor six four-hour “People's Movement Assemblies“ and present Palestinian speakers at the Forum's plenary panel. Additionally, college students will hold the first national conference of Students for Justice in Palestine, concurrent with the Forum.

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Jews need to oppose Zionism to truly hold up our varied traditions of social justice.

As a new and growing organization, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network seeks to challenge the violence and injustice of Israeli apartheid, and to challenge the notion that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

A 2007 survey reported by The Jerusalem Post found that about half of Jewish-Americans younger than age 35 feel little or no identification with Israel or with the Zionist goal of a Jewish state. Alienated from the 52 major Jewish organizations in the United States that support Israel in unison, a great number of American Jews have no organized voice on Israel — a nation that claims to represent them. They therefore have few avenues to exert political influence on Israel in their communities and political structures.

IJAN hopes to provide a countervailing voice to this hegemony, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, not only in the United States but worldwide.

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We were among the hundreds and sometimes thousands who protested every night at the Israeli Embassy in December 2008/January 2009, and who marched with 100,000 others on 10th January.

While young Muslim men and women were the first, the most numerous and the most consistent protestors, this was a popular cause - many Jewish people and people from other backgrounds participated.  All of us shared a desperate outrage at Israel's use of F-16s, drones, white phosphorous and depleted uranium; its murder of 1,400 people and the wounding and maiming of thousands more, including hundreds of children, women, people who were unarmed or holding white flags; its bombing of schools and hospitals; its decimation of animal and bird life; and its poisoning of water and air. 

Our distress and anger reflected the widespread horror in the UK at what we had heard (and been prevented from witnessing by Israel's refusal to allow reporters into Gaza), and at the devastation we were only afterwards allowed to see.¹

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In less than a month, people from across the United States and beyond will be gathering at the 2010 U.S. Assembly of Jews: Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid (the "Assembly"). The Assembly is an historic event intended to build relationships, political clarity and Jewish anti-Zionist organizing and activism. It takes place at a time when recognition of the brutal nature of the State of Israel is growing, and increasing numbers of people are compelled to challenge its impunity. To date, the Assembly has over forty endorsers, anticipates two hundred participants, and has gained the interest of Palestinian, Palestinian solidarity and anti-racist movements in the United States, as well as the attention of mainstream Jewish media.

Given the stated purposes of the Assembly, we are expecting challenges to be leveled against it. IJAN, the main organizer of the Assembly, is already receiving criticism based on inaccurate assumptions or apparently different political goals. With this momentous event upon us, we would like to take a moment to make clear the principles, positions and goals of the Assembly and help correct or prevent misconceptions.

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Dear Editor:

I am shaken and outraged by Israel's violent and deadly assault on the humanitarian activists aboard the ships of the Freedom Flotilla as it carried 10,000 tons of aid to Gaza.

 As a Chicago resident and participant in a related delegation this past January, the Gaza Freedom March, I cannot help but envision myself aboard that ship as civilians were attacked with live gunfire by one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world. Why attack in the middle of the night? Why in international waters? Why with live ammunition?

Let the world not be silent yet again in the face of a people abandoned.

As a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), I call on civil society everywhere to break the siege of Gaza and to join the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until its policies reflect human rights and Palestinian self-determination.

Lee Gargagliano

Chicago, IL

http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/letters/2342544,CST-EDT-vox02a.article

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The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) strongly condemns Israel's   barbarous early-morning raid, carried out in international waters, on a maritime humanitarian convoy, during which Israeli soldiers attacked with live ammunition peaceful civilians on board, murdering at least fifteen according to the Israeli army, perhaps many more, and wounding scores.

We are humbled and inspired by the commitment and the sacrifice of the people on board these ships. One of the boats in the convoy was named after Rachel Corrie,   murdered by an Israeli bulldozer driver while obstructing the demolition of a Palestinian house in Rafah seven years ago. This boat reminds us all that the courage and perseverance of the ships sailing to Gaza follows in an international tradition of total civic engagement and ethical commitment that echoes and responds to the perseverance and courage of a century of Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing and colonialism.

This attack on ships carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid, including educational supplies, medical supplies and construction material, is international high seas piracy. We call on all governments to end Israel's impunity, enforce international law and hold Israel accountable for its recurrent violations. Furthermore, this act of piracy was carried out in pursuit of maintaining a siege on Gaza, imposed by Israel with participation of the Egyptian government and US backing, a siege that is itself a crime against humanity. This criminal siege is deepening a terrible humanitarian crisis, with mass unemployment, extreme poverty and food insecurity affecting over a million and a half people, most of whom are refugees from the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, who are now locked in the world's largest concentration camp. Palestinians in Gaza are prevented from rebuilding their houses destroyed by Israel in the massacre of 2009, and forbidden to import stuff such as toys and chocolate as punishment for having democratically elected a government that refused to collaborate with the occupation.  (read more...)

Monday, 31 May, 15:00-17:00

Ecumenical Centre, 150 Route de Ferney, Salles II & III

(free parking available)

Speakers:

Hazem Jamjoum
Communications officer of the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights and editor of al-Majdal Quarterly Magazine

and

Caroline and Nathan Finkelstein
Geneva-based members of Urgence Palestine and of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

The event will be in English and is organized by the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum on the occasion of the World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel, 29 May - 4 June 2010.

The World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel is convened by the World Council of Churches, which invites member churches and related organizations to join a week of advocacy and action for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

The Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum is a platform that rallies churches together enabling them to coordinate their efforts and initiatives for a just peace in Palestine and Israel.

On the same date, there will be a day-long exhibition at the Ecumenical Centre with handicrafts, photos, posters, books, magazines, videos and DVDs depicting the impact of the Israeli occupation on the Palestinian people.

Media contact: Ranjan Solomon, 022.791.6398, 076.395.8250,

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHICAGO (May 2). Noah Lepawsky, a member of the Chicago chapter of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), was arrested today at a pro-Israel march sponsored by the Jewish United Fund of Chicago.

The annual "Walk With Israel" was interrupted by about 10 protesters from Chicago IJAN. Their message was that Jewish opinion is not, in fact, united in support of Israel.  Protesters signs drew on their experiences of being Jewish, and read: "Jews Reject Discrimination: End Israeli Apartheid," "Jews Know Displacement: Right of Return for All Palestinian Refugees," "Jews Recognize a Ghetto: Free Gaza," and "Jews Remember Ethnic Cleansing: Remember the Nakba." Nakba is the Arabic word for "catastrophe" and is commonly used to describe the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948.  

"Israel's history is one of ongoing ethnic cleansing," said Noah Lepawsky of Chicago IJAN. "Starting with the destruction of over 400 villages and the forced exile of 750,000 Palestinians, Israel continues to pursue apartheid policies.  We will not let this be erased from history." When the march began, four protesters staggered along the walk's route, holding up their signs but allowing marchers to proceed around them.  The remaining protesters stood across the street. Security for the Walk with Israel called police, who demanded the protesters move.  When Lepawsky, the marshal for Chicago IJAN, attempted to ascertain the rights of the protesters from the police, he was arrested and cuffed by a man dressed as private security. 

Chicago IJAN continued the protest across the street.  Protesters chanted: "As Jews we stand for justice, no matter who it's for!  We won't forget the Nakba at Zionism's core!" and "Never again, not in our name!  Israel's violence is our shame!"  The protest continued until all Walk participants had filed by. 
 
"As Jews of conscience, it is our duty to vocalize that as long as the brutal occupation of Palestine continues, no celebration of Israel is benign," said Lee Gargagliano of IJAN. "We will be back next year." 
 
Lepawsky was charged with disorderly conduct and released later that afternoon. 
 
"The charge of disorderly conduct is completely spurious," said Jeannette Perkal, another member of Chicago IJAN.  "We are awaiting an answer as to why the arrest was made by private security employed by the Jewish United Fund, not an officer of the law."  Perkal went on, "We were disturbed to learn that the JUF and the CPD find it necessary to work in collusion, both in this instance and generally. The second annual meeting of both organizations recently took place in Israel, assuring that the two share oppressive tactics and strategies for silencing dissent."  (For more information, see http://www.juf.org/news/israel.aspx?id=57594.)

With local affiliates from Chicago to the Bay Area to London and Geneva, IJAN is a growing international network of Jews whose Jewish identities are not based on Zionism but on a plurality of histories and experiences. The network is uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part. Their commitment is to the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic Palestine.

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