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.

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>> Click here for actions you can take to support the struggle for Palestinian self-determination in the face of Israeli suppression - in both Gaza and in the West Bank.

At the one-year anniversary of its brutal attack on Gaza, Israel and its allies continue to reveal their disregard for human life, freedom and dignity.

• After closing and controlling its borders, Israel brutally bombed and then invaded Gaza—leaving 1,417 Palestinians dead including 313 children and youth.

• Since the attack, which destroyed houses, wells, factories, schools, hospitals, police stations and other public buildings, the blockade has created conditions for genocide through contamination of water supplies due to white phosphorous, raw sewage pouring into the sea, and the prevention of food, medical, and other humanitarian supplies from entering Gaza. People living in Gaza are already feeling the terrible long term effects including a huge increase in birth defects and in cancers especially in children.

• As the siege and blockade of Gaza continues, Israel escalates its theft of land and home demolition in East Jerusalem—forcibly evicting or demolishing the homes of more than 600 Palestinian people in East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank this year, half of them children.

• Israel continues to build and police its Apartheid Wall as part of carving up and repressing the West Bank for purposes of military control, land theft and the control of Palestinian water supplies.

• And, inside of Israel, spearheaded by the Jewish National Fund, land and water theft continues, as Bedouins and solidarity activists resist the call for direct removal of the 70,000 Bedouin occupants from their land in the Negev.

As a result, Israel has faced international condemnation. Its barbaric assault on Gaza was met with mass demonstrations across the globe. Its barbarity has inspired humanitarian efforts to break the siege, calls for prosecution and the issuance of warrants for the arrest of Israeli war criminals, and the breaking of diplomatic ties by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Mauritania.

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As we approach the first anniversary of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), we remember the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila and over 61 years of Palestinian struggle against ethnic cleansing. We are reminded that the latest siege and blockade of Gaza is part of this ongoing colonization of Palestine. Through our actions over this anniversary we intend to honor the second intifada, which reignited the international solidarity movement from which our network emerged.

The anniversary also falls during the Jewish High Holidays. For some of us, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time for reflection and atonement for the individual and collective injustices we have committed or that happen in our name. Through taking collective responsibility we seek greater justice not only in Palestine, but throughout the world as well.

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Out of the delegation to Gaza that CODEPINK led in May came the idea to organize a large march through Gaza, with a significant international presence including well-known personalities.  In the spirit of non-violent direct action, the march would challenge the appalling and inhumane siege of Gaza.  The idea, which immediately captured the imagination of many organizers, was the brainchild of Norman Finkelstein. We are truly grateful for Prof. Finkelstein's creative thinking and willingness to put forward big ideas that generate enthusiasm and engagement.

However, after the initial call, the framework of the march was challenged by highly-respected Palestinian activists, Omar Barghouti from Jerusalem, and Haidar Eid from the Gaza. Their criticism, expressed with the utmost respect for the courage and good will of the organizers, challenged the organizers' decision to delay engaging in a wide conversation with Palestinian civil society and activists until after the call was made and the framework formulated. As Barghouti and Eid noted, that also led to a number of problems with the framework and the call. The call failed to provide historical context to the current siege, barely referred to the occupation, and picked and chose from the history of Palestinian non-violent resistance. It also used language that inadvertently reflected Israeli propaganda strategies, isolating Palestinians in Gaza from their counterparts in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Israel, and the Diaspora.

Ultimately, these criticisms led to a compromise that satisfied both the Palestinian critics and most of the initial organizers. This compromise was reflected in a "context document" that is now part of the call. We welcome the concerns of prominent Palestinian activists who represent significant grassroots organizing. We see in the exchange, negotiation and outcome a model example of how work of solidarity can deepen and improve through giving full attention to honest and constructive criticism from those most impacted by the horrors we are challenging.

We have read the "context document" and express our full support for the march based on the revised call.

 

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If your own suffering does not serve to unite you with the suffering of others, if your own imprisonment does not join you with others in prison, if you in your smallness remain alone, then your pain will have been for naught.

On the evening of August 1st in Tel Aviv, someone entered a youth group meeting at a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community center and opened fire, killing two people and injuring many more, some critically. 

We mourn the loss of those killed and injured, and are outraged by this homophobic violence. As people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer (LGBTQ), we empathize with the pain, fear, and rage that friends, loved ones, and communities are experiencing. We are heartened that people all over the world are coming together to mourn these deaths and to stand against the violence and hatred that caused them.  May this loss compel us towards greater justice, compassion and humanity!

As people who reject the Zionist premise of safety based on violence and isolation of people from each other, we cannot subscibe to the representation of this crime as an isolated event, separated from the violence that pervades the state of Israel. To sincerely engage with the question of building true safety, we must recognize the systemic aspects of this incident. Israel is marketed as a gay-friendly tourist destination and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. In fact, LGBTQ people of all ethnicities and religions face discrimination and violence in Israel, just as we do in all other parts of the world.

Furthermore, this horrendous crime took place in the context of a deeply militarized society in which a ban on assault weapons – such as the gun used in this attack - is simply unimaginable. In the territories occupied in 1967, unarmed Palestinians, including teenagers and children, are routinely shot by the Israeli army. Israeli forces routinely destroy people’s homes, confiscate their land and resources, discriminate against Palestinians in their access to water, and restricts their everyday movement – much of this now accomplished through the building of an apartheid and annexation wall. These acts of violence against Palestinians are normalized by Israel and its allies. They require a pervasive militarization and a culture of aggression within all spheres of Israeli society. Israel is founded on the denial and purposeful destruction of Palestinian existence and homeland.

Contrary to the mediated attempt to describe Israel as a force of liberation and progress, we see objecting to apartheid Israel as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people, including LGBTQ Palestinians. LGBTQ Palestinians are not going to be “saved” by a so-called gay-friendly Zionist state. Organized LGBTQ Palestinians reject the myth of Israel as an “oasis of tolerance.”

We are disturbed by the cynical manipulation of these deaths to bolster support for the Israeli state and its violent policies. When Israeli politicians say that this is an unprecedented level of violence, and promise to create safety for LGBTQ people in Israel, they are using the promise of safety to hide the violence and domination that is foundational to the Israeli state. When Zionist groups emphasize the growing gay nightlife in Tel Aviv, they are using the illusion of safety to draw support and funding to Israel from liberal queer and Jewish people around the world. We reject these lies, as well as the manipulation of our communities for profit and to increase military and political support for Israel.

Just as we reject the lie that Zionism is premised on the safety of Jews, we reject the lie that Israel prioritizes and values the safety of LGBTQ citizens of Israel.  The safety Israel claims to extend to LGBTQ people is false; we do not accept an illusion of safety for some at the expense of self determination for others.  No matter who Zionism claims to save or value, nothing can justify the targeting, suppression and oppression of the Palestinian people.  

We call on LGBTQ communities to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against Israeli violence. Putting words into action, we call on LGBTQ communities across the world to endorse the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with full international law, including an immediate end to the occupation and colonization of Palestine, a dismantling of the wall, an end to war crimes against the people of Gaza, and for the Palestinian Right of Return.

Specifically, we call on these communities to boycott international LGBTQ events held inside of Israel; to abstain from touring Israel as is marketed to LGBTQ people - with the exception of solidarity visits to Palestine; and to counter and boycott the promotion of Israeli LGBTQ tourism, and Israeli cultural and academic events in the countries in which we reside - unless they are in clear and undivided solidarity with Palestine. By these actions, we show a commitment to justice and humanity consistent with our outrage against this hateful and deadly attack that occurred in Tel Aviv.

This statement was drafted by members of the following organizations:

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, Toronto

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism

 

and

 

The following BDS activists from Israel:

Ayala Shani

Edo Medicks

Emily Schaeffer

Hamutal Erato

Leiser Peles

Liad Kantorowicz

Moran Livnat

Nitzan Aviv

Noa Abend

Rotem Biran

Roy Wagner

Segev (Lilach) Ben- David

Sonya Soloviov

Tal Shapira

Yossef/a Mekyton

Yossi Wolfson

Yotam Ben-David

In May, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) called on singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel and avoid complicity with Israel's violations of international law by cancelling his planned September concert in Israel, particularly in view of Israel's war crimes in Gaza earlier this year. Sadly, according to a July 28 article in the Jerusalem Post, Amnesty International USA has agreed to cooperate with Cohen in dealing with Israel on the basis of business as usual. Amnesty International USA will serve as sponsor of a new fund that will whitewash the money raised at Cohen's concert in Israel by using it to finance programs for "peace."  Being one of the world's strongest proponents of human rights and international law, you shall thus be subverting a non-violent, effective effort by Palestinian and international civil society to end Israel's violations of international law and human rights principles.  We call on you to be true to your values and immediately withdraw support for Leonard Cohen's ill-conceived concert in Israel.  (read more...)

The Tayyar International Conference has been organized as part of the founding process of the Progressive National Democratic Movement (PNDM - Tayyar). The Tayyar was initiated as a positive response to the need to reform the Palestinian political system to continue the battle of national liberation and independence, and to effectively defend their legitimate rights and human dignities. Its members are from diverse backgrounds and are working within their parties or as independent activists on community and national levels. The Tayyar sides with the issues of the workers, the peasants and the poor, it struggles with the sons and daughters of our people’s middle class, and it joins forces with all those who fight corruption, which affects the interests of the overwhelming majority of our people. The Tayyar is part of the Arab and international anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist movement for a new global order. More information can be found at http://tayyar-internationalconference.blogspot.com/2009/06/declaration-of-establishment-of.html .

IJAN has submitted to the conference the following statement of support:

The International Jewish anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) is a growing network of Jews whose identities are not based on Zionism but on long histories of Jewish participation in liberation struggles from Eastern Europe and Iraq to Brooklyn. IJAN's solidarity with this conference reflects our commitment to these legacies and to our participation in current struggles against racism, colonization, and imperialism. Central to this commitment is solidarity with Arab liberation struggles against US imperialism and Zionism.

More specifically, we stand in solidarity with Tayyar's commitment to resistance and liberation through "a national progressive democratic project based on pluralism, tolerance, and openness in a society which believes in social justice, equality between men and women as well as respect for human rights and personal and collective democratic freedoms." We support this historic effort to overcome the externally orchestrated divisions of Palestinian society between people living in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, inside of Israel and in Diaspora.

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On May 4, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) published an article that materially misquoted and misrepresented the positions of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN). (Berlin, May 4-Iran must lead global anti-Zionist campaign: French Jewish activist).

The article implied that IJAN expects Iran to be "the vanguard of the confrontation [against Zionism and Israel]." The article also failed to report criticism of Iran's engagement that our speaker clearly expressed, creating the false impression that IJAN awaits and accepts Iran's leadership in the struggle against Zionism. To correct the misconception about IJAN that the article in question promoted, we wish to make the following clarifications.

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We are appalled by the concerted effort, led by Israeli officials, Zionist organizations and apologists, to derail the Durban Review Conference. We condemn the use of the memory of the Nazi genocide, as Jewish organizations did during the Durban Review week, in the defense of Israel's systematic domination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. We are shocked by the cynical pretense of defending human rights, for example in Darfur and Rwanda, by organizations and groups that are only interested in silencing Palestinian demands for accountability and redress and have no serious commitment to human rights. The brazen exploitation of genocides and racialized violence in Africa for the purpose of protecting and extending colonial domination in Palestine is itself an instance of colonial racism. It is only tolerated due to the strength of racism inside the institutions of global governance.

Racism is one of the legacies of colonialism and a fundamental injustice in societies all over the world. The World Conference Against Racism in Durban 2001 took a belated small step toward recognizing the impact of colonialism and racism on Africa and initiating a global discussion about the crime of slavery and the need for restitution; it also addressed many other instances of racism that must be addressed. It is beyond obvious to us that a conference about racism, and especially a conference that seeks to address the legacy of colonial oppression, must discuss Israel, since Israel is a settler-colonial state that systematically oppresses and denies basic human rights to millions of Palestinians. Israel's attempt to derail this important conference in order to avoid being examined and called to account is an affront against all the victims of racism all over the world, including the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi genocide.

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How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow!...
She weeps sore into the night, and her tears are on her cheeks:
among all who loved her she has none to comfort her.
(Book of Lamentations)

Last week, after murdering 1400 people – of whom 400 were children – after bombing hospitals and mosques, schools, universities and humanitarian supplies, and tens of thousand of homes, Israel declared a cease-fire. A shameful parade of European leaders immediately went to Jerusalem to embrace the mass murderers and to pledge their support for the continuing siege of Gaza.

The primary purpose of this massacre was to break the spirit of the Palestinian people until they surrender and accept their fate as lesser human beings. As former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said in 2002, "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." European leaders support this goal, as did previous U.S. administrations, as do the ruling elites of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi-Arabia, despite the fury of their peoples. We wait to see if the freshly inaugurated Obama Administration will break with sixty long years of attack on the Palestinian people armed and financed by the U.S. and Europe.

We grieve with the people of Gaza. We see the faces of the children, of the women and the men; we hear their voices. We also hear the silence of the leaders of Western countries, intermittently broken by evasive platitudes. And we are reminded of the time when the world turned a blind eye while our forebears, our families, were slaughtered.

100,000 Palestinians were made homeless in Gaza this month. Most of them became refugees in 1948 when they were expelled at gunpoint from their towns and villages. Now they are homeless again, even in their land of exile, and at risk of being driven out from Palestine altogether.

Yet on January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day, the leaders of the U.S. and Europe will be joined in honoring the memory of our dead. Even as we seek to remember and to honor the immensity of that loss, we struggle to find words to convey the hypocrisy of these ceremonies, in which those who are silent today pay homage to the victims of yesterday’s silence.

The radical Jewish writer Walter Benjamin, who died while fleeing the Nazis, wrote, "not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious." The Third Reich was defeated, and yet, "the enemy has not ceased to be victorious." Racism, mass murder, and genocide continue to be accepted tools of statecraft. Even our dead are not safe. They have been called up, disturbed, dredged from their mass graves and forced to testify against their fellow human beings in pain, to confess a hatred that was alien to them and to offer themselves up as justification for a new cycle of suffering in Palestine. Their ghosts have been enlisted to help displace fellow Jews from Arab homelands, and to bequeath to them that same alien hatred, conscripting those of us descending from Arab lands to become enemies of our own memory and past.

The Jewish British MP Gerald Kaufman spoke in anguish while the massacres in Gaza were taking place: "My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza." We share and echo that refusal. Let not the memory of Jews murdered by the Nazi regime serve as cover for the attempted destruction of the Palestinian people!

Although the guns are relatively silent, this genocidal assault on the Palestinian people isn’t over. The siege, the lack of food and fresh water, the disease-threatening broken sewage system, and economic collapse and humanitarian crisis persist in Gaza with the full support of the U.S., Europe and the Egyptian government. As the siege of Gaza continues, so does the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the home demolitions, the building of the apartheid wall, the settlement build-up, the economic devastation of the towns and villages strangled by checkpoints, the assault on Palestinian neighborhoods in Jaffa, Akka, Lydda, the Galilee and the Negev, the mass imprisonment of Palestinians (over 11,000), and all the large and small ways by which Israel is seeking to crush the spirit and erase the presence of the Palestinian people in their homeland.

Faced with the threat of annihilation in Europe, Jews resisted. From ghettos to concentration camps and within countries under occupation, Jews led resistance to the Nazi regime. Today, from the ghetto of Gaza to the Bantustans of the West Bank and from the neighborhoods of Jaffa and Akka to cities across the globe, Palestinians resist Israel’s attempt to destroy them as a people. On January 27th, honoring the memory of our dead is for us inseparable from honoring more than sixty years of Palestinian survival and resistance. Only when the Palestinian people regain their freedom will the dead rest safely. Then we will all celebrate another victory for life.

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United Nations General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann likened Israel's policies toward the Palestinians to South Africa's treatment of blacks under apartheid. He also called on his collegues to use the term 'apartheid' without fear and urged that:

      Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations. 

This is a ground breaking statement by a U.N. official. It raises hopes of a U.N. engagement with apartheid tat goes beyond rethoric and begins to put real pressure for the dismantling of apartheid. Not surprisingly, Brockmann has been immediately accused of antisemitism.

>> Please sign and circulate this petition in support of UNGA President Brockmann's call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel!

>> We also urge all individuals and organizations to write in support of Brockmann and to denounce the accusations of antisemitism.  Letters may be sent directly to .  IJAN's letter of support is posted and available for download below.

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Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are threatened by a humanitarian crisis created by a two-year-old economic blockade that further exacerbates the effects of 60 years of ruthless colonial oppression. In the past two weeks, the blocking of all food and medical supplies to Gaza raises this humanitarian crisis to a level that rings with the threat of annihilation.

We are outraged but not surprised by this escalation.  As predicted by political writers such as Ilan Pappe and Toufic Haddad, Israeli’s unilaterally designed and implemented disengagement from Gaza prepared the terrain. With this withdrawal, Israel maintained control of the borders, air and water space, and completely isolated Gaza practically and politically. This has been accomplished with unconditional support from the United States and its allies and the complicity of the broader international community and Gaza’s neighbors.

The warnings about Gaza are similar to others throughout history. Mordekhai Gebirtig, the great Yiddish poet, wrote his famous song ‘S’brent’ (It Is Burning) in 1938. He wrote the song in response to the 1936 pogrom in the town of Przytyk, warning against the coming catastrophe that would befall the Jews in Europe.

The end of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas - Israel’s justification for belligerence - was in fact provoked by Israel during the United States presidential election. Israel is acting in bad faith, attacking Gaza’s civilians and using the Palestinian response to justify ratcheting up the suffering. Israel’s actions in Gaza are an assault on life itself. They are an unconscionable crime against humanity and a form of collective punishment.

Israel has taken a lesson from the Nazi government in Warsaw and other oppressive regimes by kidnapping and holding hostage humanitarian aid workers and international human rights observers. Such a tactic prevents their witnessing of and communication about what is happening in Gaza.

The latest naked display of violence by Israel and the arrogant contempt of Israel’s leaders for the humanity of the people of Gaza and therefore for the humanity of us all should move world bodies, non-governmental organizations, faith-based groups, and all people of conscience to take immediate action.

Those who have supported Israel’s refusal to deal with the democratically elected Hamas government should now understand that the starving of Gaza is the inevitable outcome of that support.

Stop the assault on and blockade of Gaza now! Stop the holding of humanitarian aid workers and human rights observers hostage!

Only a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel has a chance of stopping Israel’s violence.

If Mordechai Gebirtig, the Jewish artist and revolutionary, were alive today, he would be writing ‘S’brent’ for Gaza.

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Dear Mercedes Sosa,

We read that you plan to sing in a concert in Israel this fall. We write you to ask you to cancel this visit.

Your voice carries with it the love, the pain and the hopes of decades of struggle against oppression in Latin America. Your songs opened pathways into the heart of many of us--all over the world--to a deeper understanding and communion with the peasants, the workers and the indigenous communities of Latin America. Don't let your art become the ambassador of oppression, ethnic cleansing, murder and land usurpation by performing in Israel.

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The year 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe marked by the destruction or depopulation of more than 400 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian people from their lands, communities and homes. Since then, Palestinians have lived under occupation, as refugees, and as second class citizens on their own land; Israel's assault against the indigenous Palestinian communities continues with unremitting brutality. In Gaza, with the support of the US government and its allies, Israel has effectively cut off food, water, electricity,  (read more...)

Jewish Community Relations Council

…you do not speak for us!

The Jewish Community Relations Council consistently claims a monopoly on being “the Jewish voice”. It claims that its unconditional support for Israel’s policies and practices is the consensus within the “organized Jewish community.”  It claims that any Jew who disagrees with the Israel/US agenda for Palestine and the Middle East cannot claim a voice within the Jewish community.  Against this claim, we stand here in opposition to this celebration of the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel that displaced over 800,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.

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ISRAEL IS NOT A GUEST OF HONOUR! FREE PALESTINE!  

ASSEMBLEA FREE PALESTINE – TORINO

 “Gaza will sink – has declared the president of the Popular Committee against Blockade, Jamal al-Khoudari – and the whole world bears responsibility for this. Immediate actions must be taken to put pressure on the occupation, in order to end this crisis”.
 

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The International Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN) is a growing network of Jews whose identities are not based on Zionism but on long histories of Jewish participation in liberation struggles from Eastern Europe and Iraq to Brooklyn. IJSN’s participation in this conference reflects our commitment to these legacies and to our participation in current struggles against colonization and imperialism. Central to this commitment is solidarity with Arab liberation struggles against US imperialism and Zionism.

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June 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Golan. May 2008 will be the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of 1948 in which Zionist militant forces destroyed more than 500 Palestinian villages through massacre and intimidation, and at least 750,000 Palestinian people became refugees. These are terrible anniversaries: they call our attention and demand our response.  (read more...)