It is May 15, the anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Jewish terrorist groups making way for the establishment of the State of Israel. One could argue that Israel’s assault on Gaza and now the West Bank is even worse than the Nakba and this time it is an elected government with the support of most of the Western governments responsible for not only displacing but slaughtering Palestinians.
I first visited Israel in 1970. At that time, everyone I knew supported Israel, some with considerable enthusiasm. Not only had the 1960 film Exodus mythologized the Zionist story of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany to settle in their biblical homeland but the Kibbutz, collective farms established throughout Israel, seemed to us socialism in practice.
I found something very different from that mythology.
What shocked me most was the racism. What they called Arabs, I’m not sure I ever even heard the word Palestinian, sat at the back of the bus. There was no law about it, but they always did. They also had to go into separate entrances in public buildings like hospitals to be searched. It was so much like the American South; it was shocking to me.
When I came back no-one was critical of Israel. I didn’t get involved in organizing support for the Palestinians until I went there again with a mission from the Montreal social justice group Alternatives in 2002. I visited the West Bank two days after Israel bombed Yassar Arafat’s headquarters. My friend Monique Simard and I were so stunned at a checkpoint by the soldiers shooting at Palestinian children who were throwing rocks at them that we would have been hurt if other Palestinians hadn’t pushed us to hide behind a car.
I also visited Gaza and met with feminists there who were organizing to oppose Hamas taking over the government of Gaza.
There were still very few Jews who were critical of Israel and even when I was one of eightJewish women to occupy the Israeli consulate when Israel attacked Gaza in 2009. We were detained, held in police vans for almost an hour and then let go. It was covered in Canada only in local media. In the Middle East, it was front page news. A Palestinian friend from Ramallah told me later, “Your action did more to combat antisemitism in the Arab world than anything I have seen.”
Despite the fact that today many Jews oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jewish mainstream organizations claim to represent all Jews and are very adept at terrifying politicians if they make any criticism of Israel. I do think there has been a rise of antisemitism since October 7, 2023 but it has not been coming from the Palestinian solidarity movement. It is rising because all the mainstream Jewish organizations equate support for Israel with Judaism and Israel is murdering women and children in Palestine. Activists in the pro-Palestinian movement know that many Jews are marching with them. I think the antisemitism is coming from the same people it has always come from, right-wing white Christians who have always been antisemitic.
Unfortunately, many of the Jews who oppose Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and are horrified by the slaughter of Palestinians in the West Bank still believe in a Jewish state that will protect Jews. I think it’s a Jewish supremacist state but they don’t. They call themselves Liberal Zionists and have to date been unwilling to work with anti-Zionist Jews like me. On the pro-Palestinian side, many don’t want to ally with anyone who is not anti-Zionist.
While I am sympathetic to those views, what we need now is the broadest possible coalition. Anyone who opposes this genocide, whether or not they are willing to call it that, should be in common cause demanding that the Canadian government stop sending arms to Israel and demanding a permanent ceasefire before any further support is given to Israel.
Last week I attended a meeting where the anti-Zionist group UJPO (United Jewish People’s Order) invited representatives of liberal Zionists to fully participate in a meeting with Peter Beinart, a well-known American journalist and author of the recently published book: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza. Beinart used to be a Zionist and now, as Canadian journalist Michele Landsberg describes herself, is a post-Zionist Jew. He told us that the majority of students arrested in the U.S. for pro-Palestinian activism and called antisemitic are actually Jewish themselves.
Ben Murane, the Executive Director of the New Israel Fund said he didn’t think it was possible to have a united Left to organize against Israel’s actions in Gaza because the anti-Zionist Jews were unwilling to break with what he called “bad actors.” Beinart reminded us that in the 1970’s anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam there were huge differences. There was a left-wing that used to chant “Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Cong are going to win,” horrifying the vast majority of anti-war protesters who were just wanting to get the U.S. to stop fighting the Vietnamese and even just to end the draft. But that’s what a coalition is. Unifying for common goals across difference.
Beinart also pointed out that this new generation of Jewish activists, unlike his and my generation who rejected religion, are investing in Judaism, and creating their own version of spirituality that doesn’t centre on support of Israel but is in solidarity with all oppressed peoples around the world, especially the Palestinians.
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