Set out below in numerical and alphabetical order are the views on Zionism of numerous anti-racist Jewish scholars, writers and humanitarian activists.
100 EMINENT ANTI-RACIST JEWS OPPOSED TO RACIST ZIONISM - a must-read, detailed and documented compilation by humanitarian Canadian lawyer Edward Corrigan
Edward Corrigan (a Canadian lawyer certified as a Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of Upper Canada in London, Ontario, Canada) in a must-read, detailed and documented analysis entitled “Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians (2010): “It may surprise some but most of the strongest critics of Zionism and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians are Jewish. However, as Michael Selzer writes, “Zionism is a complex phenomenon, adequately understood by only a small percentage of its critics and by even a smaller percentage of its supporters.” As Professor Yakov M. Rabkin writes, “According to a sarcastic remark of an Israeli colleague, ‘Our claim to this land could be put in a nutshell: God does not exist, and he gave us this land.’ Indeed, secular nationalism and religious rhetoric lie at the root of the Zionist enterprise.
The political ideology of Zionism was the subject of intense debate, especially within the Jewish religious community. However, Zionism meant different things to different people. Zionism could be interpreted in a religious, political, national or racial light depending upon the circumstances. For some, Zionism was a solution for the age-old problem of anti-Semitism. For others merely an excuse for getting rid of the Jews. As Hannah Arendt noted, “The Zionist Organization had developed a genius for not answering, or answering ambiguously, all questions of political consequence. Everyone was free to interpret Zionism as he pleased …”
The only Jewish member of Lloyd George’s cabinet when Great Britain first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, Sir Edwin Montagu, was adamantly opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-Semitic. Montagu argued that Zionism and anti-Semitism were based on the same premise, namely that Jews and non-Jews could not co-exist.
Montagu’s opposition to Zionism and the Balfour Declaration was supported by the leading representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry at the time, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in particular, by three prominent British Jews Claude Montefiore, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.
Without the history of Christian anti-Semitism that has existed in Europe and the centuries of persecution of the European Jewish community political Zionism would have no legitimacy. As Hannah Arendt noted that on the question of anti-Semitism the Zionists “have indeed exploited it”…
[about 70] Other present day Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians includes…
Collections of writings on Jewish criticism of Zionism…
There are a number of other anthologies and collections of writings from anti-Zionist Jews. These include Zionism Reconsidered, Michael Selzer ed. (London: The Macmillian Company, 1970); Zionism: The Dream and the Reality: A Jewish Critique, Gary V. Smith ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974); Jewish Critics of Zionism and the Stifling and Smearing of a Dissenter, by Moshe Menuhin, (Belmont, Massachusetts: Association of Arab University Graduates, 1976); Judaism or Zionism: What Difference for the Middle East?, EAFORD & AJAZ (American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism) eds., (London: Zed Books,1986); The End of Zionism and the Liberation of the Jewish People, Eibie Weizfeld ed. (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 1989); Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jews Against the Occupation, Seth Faber ed. (Monroe ME: Common Courage Press, 2005).” (Edward Corrigan, “Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians”, Dissident Voice, 16 April 2010: https://dissidentvoice.org/2010/04/jewish-critics-of-zionism-and-of-israels-treatment-of-the-palestinians/ ).
Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and over 100 other anti-racist Jews sign “Open Letter: in defence of Chris Williamson” (2019): “We the undersigned, all Jews, are writing in support of Chris Williamson and to register our dismay at the recent letter organised by Tom Watson, and signed by parliamentary Labour party and House of Lords members, calling for his suspension (Anger over return of MP who said Labour was ‘too apologetic’ over antisemitism, 28 June).Chris Williamson did not say that the party had been “too apologetic about antisemitism”, as has been widely misreported. He correctly stated that the Labour party has done more than any other party to combat the scourge of antisemitism and that, therefore, its stance should be less apologetic. Such attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters aim to undermine not only the Labour party’s leadership but also all pro-Palestinian members. The mass media have ignored the huge support for Chris both within and beyond the Labour party. Support that includes many Jews. The party needs people like him, with the energy and determination to fight for social justice. As anti-racist Jews, we regard Chris as our ally: he stands as we do with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. It should also be noted that he has a longer record of campaigning against racism and fascism than most of his detractors. The Chakrabarti report recommended that the party’s disciplinary procedures respect due process, favour education over expulsion and promote a culture of free speech, yet this has been abandoned in practice. We ask the Labour party to reinstate Chris Williamson and cease persecuting such members on false allegations of antisemitism” (Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and over 100 other prominent Jews, “Open Letter: in defence of Chris Williamson”, Off-Guardian, 9 July 2019: https://off-guardian.org/2019/07/09/open-letter-in-defence-of-chris-williamson/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=a8eba3b881f7ffb330fca2347260315a48746014-1576099740-0-AaYE_Tkmyw9zg0Gqjmk46LNVUmm7_-ol8nYMcxPdwJVF2QNX1yrdS2iRhLOM6HTHCaNGpfhFh0EsEMTUrxx2tG6uRCotpgWzrplN9hhF7FONzp1VWKgvj-pbqi2QcEAlzJlcZ0MV4B8OCWIuDk8H7DFvZMY7scxuISXsZ79FyTqC1FUZsKn0dXAiPmKgCkCxtuYdayOYpm6qinoFqQ63XWAaTo4MYOD00_YOzQE8BZ4kdyST5c56ZP28HrDFiAlB8kq5M5qRDqwqmHGFGlHuJksENF_gqICtpN5miFzpCnbc-GZ0d_CeTNqUIeReS8nuKAtl3ZfPWOvhS094w97zZ-I .)
164 Australian anti-racist Jews sign an Open Letter protesting the mass killing in Gaza by Israel (see “An appeal from Australian Jews to the Australian Jewish community: “We cannot remain silent””, Green Left Weekly, 15 August 2014: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/57093 ).
“As Australians of Jewish identity and background, we are appalled at the current mass killing in Gaza by Israel. We reject the official mythology that Israel is under existential threat and acting in self-defence.
Since 12 July, the Israeli army has killed more than 1900 people in Gaza. Hospitals, schools, beaches, playgrounds – even UN shelters have been attacked. The whole world has reacted with horror and outrage.
In the face of the destruction of so many lives, we cannot remain silent while the official Jewish leadership gives such active support to Israel's attack on Gaza. Their decision to stand with the oppressor rather than the oppressed is a betrayal of our history and values, when authentic moral leadership is more important than ever. Siege, occupation, the slaughter of innocents and collective punishment of an entire people are deeply wrong and unlawful. Yet the Jewish leadership uncritically promulgates the propaganda of the Israeli government that this is self-defence. They are failing to represent and serve the Jewish community.
Silence is consent and evil triumphs when good people do nothing. We call on our fellow Jews to break their silence, to take a public stand, not just for an immediate cease-fire, but for an end to the underlying conditions of siege and occupation which defy elementary morality, decency and humanity, as well as international and humanitarian law.”
Signatories:
1. Kate Alway
2. Dr Eran Asoulin
3. Willy Bach, peace researcher and poet
4. Dr Peter Balint
5. Dr Tony Balint
6. Judy Bamburger, management consultant
7. Sivan Barak, student
8. Dr Ditta Bartels, retired CEO, Inphaze
9. Somerset Bean, graphic designer
10. Alice Beauchamp
11. Lyn Bender, psychologist, writer
12. Robyn Bersten, professional researcher
13. David Bilander, engineer/analyst
14. Dr Geoffrey Binder, lecturer/tutor
15. Paul Blay, landscape architect
16. Dr Barbara Bloch
17. Alfiah Blond, nutritional medicine practitioner
18. Simon Blond, university lecturer
19. Karen Bloomberg, speech pathologist
20. Leah Bloomfield, education advisor
21. Professor John Bradley, Monash University
22. Jacki Braw
23. Mariann Brull
24. Michael Brull
25. Angela Budai,union official
26. Jenny Bush, retired rehabilitation counsellor
27. Susie Carleton
28. Su Carter, administration officer
29. Dr Barry Carr, historian
30. Martin Chanock, emeritus professor of law, La Trobe University
31. Associate Professor Peter Christoff, University of Melbourne
32. Ruth Clemens, retired secondary school teacher
33. Harry Cohen, AM
34. Ian Cohen, former MLC, NSW Parliament
35. Leone Cohen
36. Rachael Collinson, former journalist
37. Max Corden AC
38. Piera Dennerstein
39. Anneke Deutsch, retired prosthetist
40. Dr John Docker, writer
41. Janet Doherty
42. Dr Sara Dowse, author
43. Alec Drummond, library worker
44. Linda Eisler, former Councillor, Canterbury LMA
45. Nicole Ehrlich, research psychologist
46. Dr Marietta Elliott-Kleerkoper, writer, language consultant
47. Marsh Emerman, lecturer in film and TV
48. Harry Feldman
49. Naima Fine
50. Dr Michelle Fink, medical specialist
51. Corinne Fisher, professional educator, sustainability
52. Lee Flax, retired lecturer, Macquarie University
53. Gabrielle Flax
54. Professor Steve Frenkel
55. Nadia Fried, musician, teacher
56. Bonnie Gelman
57. Dr Guy Gillor, public health researcher
58. Dr Hal Ginges
59. Sandra Glasbeek, retired civil servant
60. Penelope Glass, theatre worker
61. Jack Grey
62. Joseph Halevi, senior lecturer, University of Sydney
63. Gaskell M Harris, former lecturer, computer science
64. David Heilpern LLB LLM
65. Davey Heller, bushland regeneration worker
66. David Hermolin, lead union organiser
67. Tim Hollo, musician and activist
68. Janine Israel
69. John Jacobs, actor, lecturer
70. Professor Keith Jacobs, University of Tasmania
71. Margaret Jacobs
72. Max Kaiser
73. Dr David Kaye, psychiatrist
74. John Kaye, Greens NSW MP
75. Margaret Kaye, Feldenkrais practitioner
76. Dr Rick Kuhn, adjunct reader in Sociology, Australian National University
77. Sarah Lay, retired public school teacher
78. Melanie Lazarow, student
79. Sue Leigh, activist and former counselor
80. Michael Lever, archeologist and cultural heritage advisor
81. Dr David Levy
82. Dr Gary Levy, educator, researcher
83. Rachel Liebhaber
84. Professor G J Lindell AM
85. Ian Lisser, union activist
86. Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist, author, Guardian columnist
87. Jackie Lublin
88. Dr Terry Lustig, environmental and water engineer
89. Margo McKelvie
90. Laurie Izaks McSween
91. Jonathan Maltz, counsellor
92. Miriam Margolyes, actress
93. Dennis Martin
94. Leon Medalia
95. Stefan Moore, film maker
96. Associate Professor Alan Morris, University of Technology, Sydney
97. Martin Munz
98. Haskell Musry, Occupational Health and Safety Consultant
99. Liam Neame, academic
100. Dr Ian Neering, retired Associate Professor, University of NSW
101. Joan Nestle, retired Associate Professor, CUNY
102. Sharmila Nezovic
103. Alex Nissen, educator
104. Jacqui Nissim, union organiser
105. Rod Oaten, retired school teacher
106. Judith O'Conal-Prinz, professional portrait painter
107. Dennis Oppenheim, retired insurance broker
108. Sandra Padova, lesbian social justice advocate
109. Dr Tamas Pataki, author and retired lecturer, University of Melbourne
110. Cathy Peters, ABC Radio National producer
111. Tim Petterson, Campaigns and Communications Director
112. Dr Annie Pettit
113. Dr Annie Pfingst, research fellow
114. Abe Pogos, script writer
115. Vivienne Porzsolt, spokesperson, Jews against the Occupation
116. Richard Raber, film-maker
117. Adjunct Associate Professor Karl Reed
118. Michelle Reiner, customer service administrator
119. Andrew Riemer
120. Marilyn Rister
121. Susan Rosedale, teacher
122. Deborah Rosenberg
123. Les Rosenblatt
124. David Rothfiled
125. Pamela J Rothfield
126. Paul Rubner, retired librarian
127. Dr Jen Runds
128. Jay Rutovitz, energy consultant
129. Margot Salom, researcher
130. Kim Sattler, secretary, Unions ACT
131. Daniel Saks
132. Sol Salbe, journalist
133. Yvette Scholtmeyer, editor
134. John Seed, OAM
135. Debra Shulkes, editor
136. Regina Sigal, madam
137. Dr Ben Silverstein, lecturer, University of NSW
138. Dr Jordy Silverstein, historian, University of Melbourne
139. Esther Singer, vegetable farmer
140. Deborah Singerman, editor, writer, project management consultant
141. Associate Professor Peter Slezak, University of NSW
142. Dr David Slucki
143. Dr Sue Starfield
144. Norman Sterling
145. Dr Larry Stillman
146. David Stockman
147. Lanie Stockman
148. Dr Marcelo Svirsky, lecturer, University of Wollongong
149. Anna Tambour
150. Robin Taubenfeld, teacher and community organiser
151. Leah Thomas, student
152. Fred Tropp-Asher, retired IT project manager
153. Robyn Unger, public servant
154. Susan Varga, author
155. Shobha Varkey
156. Avril Vorsay, researcher, translator, performer
157. Peter Walton, self-employed
158. Jamie Walvisch, university lecturer
159. Dr David Weatherell, honorary fellow in history, Deakin University
160. George Winston AM
161. Dr N D Witton
162. Dr Ron Witton
163. Sandra Goldbloom Zurbo, editor and author
164. Dr David Zyngier, senior lecturer, Monash University
200 anti-racist Jewish & non-Jewish writers’ anti-apartheid Israel letter to PEN America and signed by 11 organizations, 61 individuals and 148 additional signatories (2016): “To PEN American Center: We, the undersigned, including participants at PEN World Voices Festival, ask the Festival to reject support from the Embassy of Israel. The Embassy of Israel is listed among the “Champions” of the World Voices Festival, and as a sponsor of a panel. Given PEN American Center’s mission of supporting freedom of expression, it is deeply regrettable that the Festival has chosen to accept sponsorship from the Israeli government, even as it intensifies its decades-long denial of basic rights to the Palestinian people, including the frequent targeting of Palestinian writers and journalists… Since 2005, Palestinian civil society has called on people of conscience around the world to engage in a peaceful campaign of boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning (BDS) Israel in order to force it to comply with international law and respect the rights of Palestinians now living under Israeli military occupation, as unequal citizens within Israel, or as refugees, denied their right to return to their homeland. The union representing Palestinian writers, the General Union of Palestinian Writers, actively supports this boycott call. We appeal to PEN American Center to honor this boycott call and refuse sponsorship by the Israeli embassy or any complicit Israeli institution for the 2016 World Voices Festival and for future PEN American Center activities… As with South Africa, where an international boycott played a crucial role in bringing an end to apartheid, we call on PEN American Center not to partner with the Israeli government or other complicit institutions until Israel fulfills its obligations under international law and fully recognizes the Palestinian people’s right to live in full equality and freedom in their homeland [signed by 11 organizations, 61 individuals and 148 additional signatories] (“Letter to PEN American Center: don’t partner with Israeli Government”, Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, 2016: https://adalahny.org/web-action/1376/letter-pen-american-center-don-t-partner-israeli-government ).
“Jewish Groups defend Israel boycott”, Green Left Weekly, 10 April 2011: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47299
Below is a letter published in March by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network that endorses the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
The letter was issued in response to a February 15 statement by Zionist (pro-Israel) groups that said the BDS campaign was anti-Semitic and “antithetical to freedom of speech”.
* * *
Because academic, cultural and commercial boycotts, divestments and sanctions of Israel:
• are being called for by Palestinian civil society in response to the occupation and colonisation of their land,
• are a moral tool of non-violent, peaceful response to more than sixty years of Israeli colonialism,
• and, rightfully place accountability on Israeli institutions (and their allies and partners) that use business, cultural, and academic ties to white-wash Israel’s responsibility for continuing crimes against humanity,
The undersigned organisations and individuals stand firm in our support of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) initiatives against Israel until it meets its obligation to recognise the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law.
BDS is not anti-Semitic
We reject the notion that the 2005 BDS call from Palestine, and the BDS campaigns the world over which it has inspired, are rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment.
On the contrary, BDS is an anti-racist movement against the daily, brutal occupation of Palestine and military threat to the region by the state of Israel.
False claims of anti-Semitism distort the true nature of the Palestinian struggle and are an affront to, and betrayal of, the long history of Jewish survival and resistance to persecution.
BDS is not anti-democratic
We also reject the assertion that the cultural and academic boycotts of Israel defy the democratic principle of free speech.
Research and development in academic institutions play a central role in designing and defending Israel’s military and intelligence machinery.
Cultural institutions perpetuate the deception of Israeli democracy. To defend freedom of speech for those who disregard justice while demonising those who struggle for justice is a great disservice to genuine democracy.
Through boycott, divestment and sanctions, civil society asserts our commitment to not contribute to the Israeli state, which is responsible for atrocious acts of disregard for human life and well being.
Attacks against BDS campaigns will not prevent us from taking this stance against Israeli impunity.
For the Jewish organisations signed onto this letter, self-determination for Jews includes the right to participate in the movement for justice in Palestine and to live in the world with our fellow citizens in peace, freedom, and equity.
It does not include the domination and colonisation of other people or living separate from our fellow human beings in a state that privileges Jews.
BDS was a key strategy in ending the white South African system of apartheid by applying international pressure.
In pursuit of justice, peace and freedom for all, we speak out as Jews committed to BDS and Palestinian liberation.
• International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
• Not In Our Name (Argentina)
• Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in Middle East (EJJP, Germany)
• Not in Our Name: Jews Opposing Zionism (Canada)
• Jews for a Just Peace (Fredericton, Canada)
• Independent Jewish Voice (Canada)
• Middle East Children's Alliance (USA)
• Critical Jewish Voice (Austria)
• Women in Black (Austria)
• French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP)
• Bay Area Women in Black (USA)
• St. Louis Women in Black (USA)
• Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace (USA)
• American Jews for a Just Peace (USA)
• Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (Britain)
• JUNTS, Catalan Association of Jews and Palestinians, Spain)
• Ronnie Kasrils, former South African government minister, writer, founder Not In My Name, South Africa
• Antony Loewenstein, Independent Australian Jewish Voices
• Peter Slezak, Independent Australian Jewish Voices
• Moshe Machover, Professor (emeritus) (UK), founder Matzpen
• Felicia Langer, Israeli lawyer, author, Right Livelihood Award 2006 (Alternative Nobel Prize) 1990, Bruno Kreisky Prize 1991
• Mieciu Langer, Nazi Holocaust survivor
• Hedy Epstein, Nazi Holocaust survivor
• Hajo G. Meyer PhD, Nazi Holocaust survivor
• Kamal Chenoy, IJAN India & The All India Peace and Solidarity Organization
• Paola Canarutto & Giorgio Forti, Rete ECO, Italy
• Liliane Cordova Kaczerginski, IJAN France
• Sonia Fayman, IJAN France & UJFP
• Ernesto Rosenberg, GRAMARPAL (Argentine-Palestinian Friendship Group, Neuquen, Argentina)
• Mark Elf, blogger, Jews sans Frontieres
Professor Peter Singer (born 6 July 1946) is a leading philosopher and ethicist. Professor Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He is particularly famous for his book "Animal Liberation" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer ).
In March 2010 Professor Peter Singer and a large number of other decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history. According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Letter signed by 350 Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide and published by ICAN:
“As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.
We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia.
Furthermore, we are disgusted and outraged by Elie Wiesel’s abuse of our history in these pages to justify the unjustifiable: Israel’s wholesale effort to destroy Gaza and the murder of more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many hundreds of children. Nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water.
We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. We call for an immediate end to the siege against and blockade of Gaza. We call for the full economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel. “Never again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!
Signed [by 350 Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide]” (see “Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza”, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), 23 August 2014: http://ijsn.net/nafa/survivors-and-descendants-letter/ ).
Jewish Voice for Peace and 40 other anti-racist Jewish organizations around the world on the anti-racism of BDS (2018) and the need to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism (2018): “As social justice organizations from around the world, we write this letter with growing alarm regarding the targeting of organizations that support Palestinian rights in general and the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in particular. These attacks too often take the form of cynical and false accusations of antisemitism that dangerously conflate anti-Jewish racism with opposition to Israel’s policies and system of occupation and apartheid.
We live in a frightening era, with growing numbers of authoritarian and xenophobic regimes worldwide, foremost among them the Trump administration, allying themselves with Israel’s far right government while making common cause with deeply antisemitic and racist white supremacist groups and parties.
From our own histories we are all too aware of the dangers of increasingly fascistic and openly racist governments and political parties. The rise in antisemitic discourse and attacks worldwide is part of that broader trend.
At times like this, it is more important than ever to distinguish between the hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.
This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.
We urge our governments, municipalities, universities and other institutions to reject the IHRA definition and instead take effective measures to defeat white supremacist nationalist hate and violence and to end complicity in Israel’s human rights violations. Israel does not represent us and cannot speak for us when committing crimes against Palestinians and denying their UN-stipulated rights.
The Nobel Peace Prize-nominated, Palestinian civil society-led BDS movement for Palestinian rights has demonstrated an ongoing proven commitment to fighting antisemitism and all forms of racism and bigotry, consistent with its dedication to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Some of the undersigned organizations support BDS in full, others in part, and others have no formal position on BDS. We all affirm the current call for BDS as a set of tools and tactics that should not be defined as antisemitic.
Signed:
Academia4equality (Israel)
Arbeter Ring/Workmen’s Circle, Southern California
Boycott from Within (Israeli citizens for BDS)
Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel)
Collectif Judéo Arabe et Citoyen pour la Palestine (France)
Dayenu: New Zealand Jews Against Occupation (New Zealand)
Een Ander Joods Geluid (A Different Jewish Voice) (The Netherlands)
Een Andere Joodse Stem – Another Jewish Voice (Flanders, Belgium)
European Jews for a Just Peace
Free Speech on Israel (UK)
Gate48 – critical Israelis in the Netherlands
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
Independent Jewish Voices (UK)
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
Italian Network of Jews Against the Occupation
Jewish Anti-Fascist Action Berlin (Germany)
Jewish Socialists’ Group (UK)
Jewish Voice for Democracy and Justice in Israel/Palestine (Switzerland)
Jewish Voice For Labour (UK)
Jewish Voice for Peace (USA)
Jewish Voice for Peace members in London (UK)
Jews Against Fascism (Australia)
Jews against the Occupation (Australia)
Jews for Justice for Palestinians (UK)
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return (USA)
Jews of Color & Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in Solidarity w/ Palestine (USA)
Jews Say No! (USA)
JIPF – Judar för Israelisk Palestinsk Fred (Sweden)
Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden im Nahost e.V. (Germany)
Junts, Associació Catalana de Jueus i Palestins (Catalonia, Spain)
Los Otros Judíos (Argentina)
Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine (UK)
Quebrando Muros – Judeus Brasileiros Pela Descolonização da Palestina (Brazil)
Scottish Jews Against Zionism
SEDQ Network- A Global Jewish Network for Justice
South African Jewish Voices for a Just Peace (South Africa)
South African Jews for a Free Palestine (South Africa)
Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique (Saint-Gilles, Belgium)
United Jewish People’s Order (Canada)
Union Juive Française pour la Paix (France)
Boston Workmen’s Circle, Center for Jewish Culture and Social Justice” (Jewish Voice for Peace, “First-ever: 40+ Jewish groups world-wide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, Jewish Voice for Peace, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/ ).
60 prominent anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish Australians oppose Israeli crimes & extremist Netanyahu visit to Australia (February, 2017):
“Australia should not welcome the Prime Minister of Israel
We strongly oppose the official visit to Australia of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel continues to defy all United Nations calls for it to comply with international law in respect of its illegal settlement building, and its treatment of the indigenous Palestinian population. Instead, over the last 50 years, Israel has held the people of Palestine under military occupation and:
·continues to illegally build settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem;
·continues to confiscate Palestinian land;
·continues to demolish Palestinian homes;
· continues its policy of imprisonment of Palestinians without trial even of children as young as 12; and
·continues its blockade of the 1.8 million civilian inhabitants of Gaza.
Those actions are not symbolic of a nation desirous of building peace with its neighbours. Those policies build understandable resentment, anger and desperation amongst Palestinians.
We want all Israelis and Palestinians to have peace and freedom; we oppose all forms of terrorism and criminal violence by either side.
We recognise when there is a gross imbalance of power, conflict will never be resolved. Mr Netanyahu’s policies consistently aim to provoke, intimidate and oppress the Palestinian population which increase that imbalance, thus taking Israel irretrievably further from peace. These policies are inconsistent with Australian values and beliefs and we should not welcome him here.
The Australian Government needs to rethink its one-sided support for the Israeli Government. We are appalled that our Government opposes the recent UN Security Council
resolution supporting the application of international law to Israel and Palestine, when most nations, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France and New Zealand, support it. Even the USA did not oppose it. It is time for the suffering of the Palestinan people to stop and for Australia to take a more balanced role in supporting the application of international law and not supporting Mr Netanyahu and his policies.
Signatories
Gavan Griffith QC, former Solicitor General
Gavan Griffith QC, former Solicitor General
The Honourable Murray Rutledge Wilcox, AO, QC, former Federal Court Judge
Julian Burnside AO, QC
John Karkar QC
Paul Heywood Smith QC
Claire O’Connor SC
Janet Holmes-à-Court, AC
Jon Stanhope, ACT Chief Minister 2001-2011
The Hon Alan Griffin, former Labor Minister
The Hon Melissa Parke, former federal member for Fremantle and lawyer for the United Nations in Gaza
Jill Hall, Former member for Shortland
Laurie Ferguson, Former member for Werriwa
Hon. Sandra Kanck, Former Member of the South Australian Legislative Council
Ms Miriam Margolyes OBE, Actor
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, Writer and academic
Sara Dowse, Writer
Samah Sabawi, Author, Playwright and PhD candidate Victoria University
Bishop George Browning, Former Anglican Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn, APAN President
Rev Gregor Henderson AM, Past President, Uniting Church in Australia
Associate Professor Peter Slezak, Independent Australian Jewish Voices
Dr Peter Manning, journalist, academic and author
Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees AM, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies
Ms Wendy Turner, Founding and Executive member of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network
Professor Bassam Dally, The University of Adelaide
Professor Mohamad Abdall, University of South Australia
Jo Jordan, Presiding Clerk, for The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia
Christina Wilcox, filmmaker
Sara Saleh, media commentator and human rights activist
Dr Jacinda Woodhead, Editor, Overland magazine
Michael Brull, New Matilda columnist
Associate Professor Halim Rane, Griffith University
Dr Marcelo Svirsky, Senior Lecturer, University of Wollongong
Associate Professor Deborah Zion
Associate Professor Barbara Baird, Flinders University
Associate Professor Jake Lynch, Department of Peace and Conflict Studies
Professor Terri-ann White, The University of Western Australia
Professor John Langmore, University of Melbourne
Associate Professor Ahmad Shboul AM, University of Sydney
David Zyngier, Senior Lecturer, Monash University
Venerable Dr Erica Mathieson, Anglican Archdeacon of North Canberra
Hana Assafiri, Restaurateur and social justice advocate
Sister Susan Connelly, Member, Sisters of St Joseph
Father Claude Mostowik MSC, President Pax Christi Australia
Revd James Barr, Past Moderator, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Connexion in Victoria
Ibrahim Ayshan, President, General Union of Palestinian Workers - Australia
Rev Harry Kerr, Convenor, Pax Christi Victoria
Dr. Mahmoud Abu Arab, Clinical Psychologist
Issa Shaweesh, businessman
David Forde, Pride of Australia Medal 2014
Dr Kevin Bray, Chair, Australians for Justice and Peace in Palestine
Harry Wallace, Director, Major Issues and Theology Foundation
Annette Brownlie, Chair, Just Peace Qld Inc.
Helen Rainger, President, Palestine Israel Ecumenical Network
Nasser Mashni, Australians for Palestine
Hilmi Dabbagh, Coordinator, Australian Palestinian Professionals Network
Assoc Prof Jon Jureidini Vice President Australian Friends of Palestine Association
Dr Vacy Vlazna, Coordinator, Justice for Palestine Matters
Cathy Peters, Convenor, Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine
Jamil Batshoun -President, The Australian Palestinian Club
Bashir Sawalha, President of Australian Palestinian Graduates Club” (“Australia should not welcome the Prime Minister of Israel”, February 2017: https://apanaustralia.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/statement_netanyahu_signatories_for_release_final.pdf ).
64 eminent humanitarians from around the world, including Nobel Laureates and leading anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish figures, have written an Open Letter protesting the horrendous violence by the state of Israel against its captive Palestinian population and concluding “We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel, similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid” [7-8] (2014):
OPEN LETTER.
“ Israel has once again unleashed the full force of its military against the captive Palestinian population, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip, in an inhumane and illegal act of military aggression. Israel ‘s ability to launch such devastating attacks with impunity largely stems from the vast international military cooperation and trade that it maintains with complicit governments across the world. Over the period 2008-19, the US is set to provide military aid to Israel worth $30bn, while Israeli annual military exports to the world have reached billions of dollars. In recent years, European countries have exported billions of euros’ worth of weapons to Israel, and the EU has furnished Israeli military companies with research grants worth hundreds of millions. Emerging economies such as India , Brazil and Chile are rapidly increasing their military trade and cooperation with Israel , despite their stated support for Palestinian rights. By importing and exporting arms to Israel and facilitating the development of Israeli military technology, governments are effectively sending a clear message of approval for Israel’s military aggression, including its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. Israel ‘s military technology is marketed as “field-tested” and exported across the world. Military trade and joint military-related research relations with Israel embolden Israeli impunity in committing grave violations of international law and facilitate the entrenchment of Israel ‘s system of occupation, colonisation and systematic denial of Palestinian rights. We call on the UN and governments across the world to take immediate steps to implement a comprehensive and legally binding military embargo on Israel , similar to that imposed on South Africa during apartheid.
Adolfo Peres Esquivel Nobel Peace Laureate, Argentina, Ahdaf Soueif author, Egypt/UK, Aki Olavi Kaurismäki film director, Finland, Alice Walker writer, US, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Nobel Peace Laureate, South Africa, Betty Williams Nobel Peace Laureate, Ireland, Boots Riley rapper, poet, arts producer, US, Brian Eno musician, UK, Caryl Churchill playwright, UK, Chris Hedges journalist, Pullitzer Prize 2002, US, Cynthia McKinney politician, activist, US, David Palumbo-Liu academic, US, Etienne Balibar philosopher, France, Federico Mayor Zaragoza former Unesco director general, Spain, Felim Egan painter, Ireland, Frei Betto liberation theologian, Brazil, Gillian Slovo writer, UK/South Africa, Githa Hariharan writer, India, Giulio Marcon MP (SEL), Italy, Hilary Rose academic, UK, Ilan Pappe historian, Israel, Ismail Coovadia former South African ambassador to Israel, James Kelman writer, Scotland, Janne Teller writer, Denmark, Jeremy Corbyn MP (Labour), UK, Joanna Rajkowska artist, Poland, Jody Williams Nobel Peace Laureate, US, John Berger artist, UK, John Dugard former ICJ judge, South Africa, John McDonnell MP (Labour), UK, John Pilger journalist and filmmaker, Australia, Judith Butler philosopher, US, Juliane House academic, Germany, Karma Nabulsi Oxford University, UK/Palestine, Ken Loach filmmaker, UK, Kool AD (Victor Vazquez) musician, US, Liz Lochhead national poet for Scotland, UK, Luisa Morgantini
former vice president of the European Parliament, Italy, Mairead Maguire Nobel Peace Laureate, Ireland, Michael Mansfield barrister, UK, Michael Ondaatje author, Canada/Sri Lanka, Mike Leigh writer and director, UK, Naomi Wallace playwright, screenwriter, poet, US, Noam Chomsky academic, author, US, Nurit Peled academic, Israel, Prabhat Patnaik economist, India, Przemyslaw Wielgosz chief editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, Polish edition, Poland, Raja Shehadeh author and Lawyer, Palestine, Rashid Khalidi academic, author, Palestine/US, Richard Falk f ormer UN special rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories, US, Rigoberta Menchú Nobel Peace Laureate, Guatemala, Roger Waters musician, UK, Ronnie Kasrils former government minister, South Africa, Rose Fenton director, Free Word Centre, UK, Sabrina Mahfouz author, UK, Saleh Bakri actor, Palestine, Sir Geoffrey Bindman lawyer, UK, Slavoj Zizek author, Slovenia, Steven Rose academic, UK, Tom Leonard writer, Scotland, Tunde Adebimpe musician, US, Victoria Brittain journalist, UK, Willie van Peer academic, Germany, Zwelinzima Vavi secretary general of Cosatu, South Africa ”. END OPEN LETTER.
(see Letter, “The arms trade and Israel ‘s attack on Gaza ” , The Guardian, 19 July 2014: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/arms-trade-israel-attack-gaza ; BDS Movement Petition : http://www.bdsmovement.net/stoparmingisrael ; “Boycott Apartheid Israel ”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ )..
Avigail Abarbanel is a former Israeli soldier and citizen of Israel, who renounced her Israeli citizenship in 2001 in protest against Israel's occupation and human rights abuses of the Palestinian people. She is active in the struggle for Palestinian rights and is currently the director of Deir Yassin Remembered in Canberra (see: http://www.avigailabarbanel.me.uk/ ).
Avigail Abarbanel on bearing witness to Israeli atrocites: “When one day, Israelis stand trial for the occupation and the war crimes against the Palestinian people, I would like to be counted as someone who spoke up. I was brought up on stories of the Holocaust. I was told that perhaps even more despicable than the Nazis themselves were all those who knew what was happening and allowed it to happen. Jews have always felt abandoned by a world full of bystanders. Being a bystander doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means collaborating. And I don’t want to be a collaborator.”
[1]. Avigail Abarbanel, “Welcome - Introduction”, website: http://www.avigailabarbanel.me.uk/ .
Osie Gabriel Adelfang is an Israeli-American writer and editor, and part-time marketing director. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University LA and edited “Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation”, Whole World Press, Spring 2010 (see: http://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/announcing-the-upcoming-book-release-shifting-sands/ , http://www.osieonline.com/Home_Page.html and http://www.osieonline.com/About__Biography_.html )
Osie Gabriel Adelfang (2010): Editor, “Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation”, Whole World Press, Spring 2010. [1].
Osie Gabriel Adelfang on “Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation” (2010): “Welcome to the online home of writer/editor Osie Gabriel Adelfang. Osie is thrilled to announce the upcoming publication of an unprecendented nonfiction anthology. The book is a collection of essays by more than a dozen Jewish women writer/activists who tell heartbreaking stories of peaceful resistance and solidarity against Israel's occupation of Palestine. The book, titled Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, is slated to be published by emerging green publisher Whole World Press in Spring 2010 … In addition to the moving contributions of authors including Anna Baltzer (Witness in Palestine) and Jen Marlowe (Darfur Diaries), the book includes an introduction by American peace activist Cindy Sheehan and a forward from award-winning Israeli journalist Amira Hass.” [2].
[1]. Osie Gabriel Adelfang, Editor, “Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation”, Whole World Press, Spring 2010.
[2]. Osie Gabriel Adelfang on “Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation”,: http://www.osieonline.com/ .
Agudat Israel Strictly Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism as summarized by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok (2010): In 1912, a group of Strictly Orthodox Jews founded the Agudat Israel to preserve Torah Judaism. This organization was determined in its opposition to Zionism, which they saw as a threat to Orthodoxy. As Rabbi Dov Schneerson (1866-1920) put it ”[the Zionists] make the impression… that the whole purpose of the Torah … is merely to strengthen collective feeling. This theory can easily be adopted by young people who regard themselves as instruments prepared for the fulfilment of the Zionist ideal. They naturally regard themselves as completely liberated from the Torah and the commandments for now, they think, nationalism has replaced religion, and is the best means for the preservation of society.”
Nonetheless, the Orthodox anti-Zionists did accept that it was desirable to return to the Promised Land, and among the early settlers there was a strong Orthodox presence. In the early days, its leaders used to campaign against the Zionists, protesting to the British Government and the League of Nations about their nationalistic aspirations,. On occasions they even joined forces with the Arab leaders who were disturbed by the increased Jewish presence in Palestine. So deep was the rift between Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox that a member of the Agudat Israel executive was assassinated by the Jewish underground military organization in 1924. In response, one Orthodox spokesman declared that the Zionists were “evil men and ruffians” and that Hell had entered Israel with Theodor Herzl” (Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, “Judaism: A Beginner’s Guide”, Oneworld, 2010).
In March 2010, Professor Dennis Altman and a large number of other decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history. According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
The American Council for Judaism (ACJ) was founded in 1942 and was opposed to Zionism. It was the only major organized Jewish American opposition to Zionism in the 1940s. The ACJ position is summarized by the statement of its former chairman Clarence Coleman (1959): “I am an American and a Jew. I am an anti-Zionist… I am against every force or influence at work in the lives of American Jews which tends to separate and segregate them, in areas other than their religious beliefs, from their fellow Americans… I am for every program that will make better understood our meaning of Judaism and will advance the historic process of integration, in the secular and political sense, of American Jews.” (see: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:iobPaLU54msJ:www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx%3Fid%3D95+%22thomas+kolsky%22&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au and Professor Thomas Kolsky’s book Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism 1942-1948: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/717_reg.html ).
Professor Kolsky’s view of the religious significance of the ACJ, "The religious education program . . . was undoubtedly the most successful Council [ACJ] activity . . . By providing religious education devoid of Jewish nationalism, the program attracted new members who were still committed to classical Reform Judaism." (see: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:iobPaLU54msJ:www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx%3Fid%3D95+%22thomas+kolsky%22&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au ).
American Council for Judaism (ACJ) statement of beliefs: “Founded in 1942, ACJ has long offered a distinctive vision of identity and commitment for the American Jewish community.
We affirm the uniqueness of the American Jewish experience, and the vital role Jews have played in the development of our nation and its democratic ideals. We cherish our rights and obligations as responsible citizens of the United States.
We view Judaism as a universal religious faith, rather than an ethnic or nationalist identity. We further recognize the silent and often non-participating majority who define their Judaism in the context of their own perspectives. We remain committed to the ethical, intellectual, and prophetic values of Judaism. We cherish the spiritual ties that link us to our fellow Jews around the world, with whom we share our heritage and history.
The State of Israel has significance for the Jewish experience. As a refuge for many Jews who have suffered persecution and oppression in other places, Israel certainly has meaning for us. However, that relationship is a spiritual, historical, and humanitarian one - it is not a political tie. As American Jews, we share the hope for the security and well being of the State of Israel, living in peace and justice with its neighbors.
We celebrate the rich diversity of opinion within today's changing Jewish community. No one group or perspective reflects the broad range of positions among American Jews. We embrace the American tradition of open and respectful dialogue.
Our most fervent hopes are for a strong, creative and spiritually renewed American Jewish community, and for freedom and security for Jews everywhere; so that we might fulfill our historic mission of working together with all people to build a world of justice, freedom, and peace.
The relationship of American Jews to the State of Israel: the American Council of Judaism perspective.
The centuries during the Biblical era in which Jews constituted a sovereign commonwealth in the land we now call Israel gave rise to the shared sense of identity, religious beliefs and values of Judaism. In the centuries that followed, Jews went forth from this land and went to live in other places around the world as Jews. We believe that although Israel is the birthplace of our faith, it is not the place of our national affiliation.
As American Jews, we believe that our nationality is American. We are tied both geographically and emotionally to the United States and to its values of democracy, freedom, liberty and justice. We believe we can be Jews and Americans.
Jews everywhere share common bonds of history, religious beliefs, values and traditions. As American Jews, our ties to the State of Israel are spiritual, emotional and historical, not, however, political. We are grateful that Israel has served as a refuge for many Jews who have suffered persecution and oppression in other places. We have a great desire to support the well-being of our fellow Jews. We pray for peace. Yet, we are American Jews: proud, responsible citizens of the United States.
When, at the end of the Passover Seder, we say “Next year in Jerusalem,” we are articulating a religious metaphor. What we mean is “Next year all Jews should live in freedom,” just as we do in the United States.” [1].
[1]. American Council for Judaism (ACJ) statement of beliefs: http://www.acjna.org/acjna/about_principles.aspx .
American Reform Movement opposition to Zionism as summarized by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok (2010): “The American Reformers were even more downright. Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900) , the first president of the American Reform rabbinical college declared: “We denounce the whole question of the Jewish State as foreign to the spirit of the modern Jew of this land, who looks upon America as his Palestine and whose interests are centred here.” These early Reformers believed that the salvation of the Jews lay not in the return to the Promised Land, but in the emergence of a liberal, educated and pluralistic society”
Many members of the American Reform Movement persisted in their opposition to Zionism right up until World War II. As late as 1942, a number of American anti-Zionists gathered together to formulate a program of action. This body asserted that the political aspirations of the Zionists were contrary to the universalistic spirit of Judaism and that Zionism threatened Jewry in that it called into question the loyalty of the Jews to the countries in which they lived. Even after World War II, the American reform liturgy for the Passover meal ended not with “Next Year in Jerusalem”, but with “God Bless America!”
Reform Jews therefore objected to Zionism because it undermined Jewish allegiance to host nations and because it emphasized the ethnic, nationalistic spirit of Judaism” (Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, “Judaism: A Beginner’s Guide”, Oneworld, 2010).
In March 2010 a large number of decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history. According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
44 anti-racist British Jews signed the following letter in which they renounce the racist Israeli "law of return" that says Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists) have the right to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship but denies the right of 7 million Palestinian refuges to live in the land continuously inhabited by their Palestinian forebears since the dawn of history. A very well known signatory is neurobiologist Professor Steven Rose of the Open University (see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2002/aug/08/guardianletters4
) .
Statement on the "law of return" by 44 anti-racist British Jews:
"We are Jews, born and raised outside Israel, who, under Israel's "law of return", have a legal right to Israeli residence and citizenship (Real lives, G2, August 7). We wish to renounce this unsought "right" because:
1) We regard it as morally wrong that this legal entitlement should be bestowed on us while the very people who should have most right to a genuine "return", having been forced or terrorised into fleeing, are excluded.
2) Israel's policies towards the Palestinians are barbaric - we do not wish to identify ourselves in any way with what Israel is doing.
3) We disagree with the notion that Zionist emigration to Israel is any kind of "solution" for diaspora Jews, anti-semitism or racism - no matter to what extent Jews have been or are victims of racism, they have no right to make anyone else victims.
4) We wish to express our solidarity with all those who are working for a time when Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be lived in by people without any restrictions based on so-called racial, cultural, or ethnic origins.
We look forward to the day when all the peoples of the area are enabled to live in peace with each other on this basis of non-discrimination and mutual respect. Perhaps some of us would even wish to live there, but only if the rights of the Palestinians are respected. To those who consider Israel a "safe haven" for Jews in the face of anti-semitism, we say that there can be no safety in taking on the role of occupier and oppressor. We hope that the people of Israel and their leaders will come to realise this soon.
Michael RosenIan Saville
Prof Irene Bruegel
Michael Kustow
Mike Marqusee
Prof Steven Rose
Leon Rosselson
and 38 others". [1].
[1]. "We renounce Israel rights", UK Guardian, 8 August 2002: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2002/aug/08/guardianletters4 .
Israeli Citizens espousing Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (2016): “We are Israeli citizens, opposed to the Israeli government’s policies of oppression, occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinian people. Many of us are veteran human rights activists who have long worked against these policies. It's our long years of anti-racism advocacy that brought us to the understanding that the most effective way to stop the apartheid system is to deny its economic fuel and political legitimacy. Therefore, we strongly support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), aimed at ending these actions. We write to you to ask you to heed the Palestinian call for justice, and cancel your concert in Israel… Israel holds the Gaza Strip under hermetic siege, in which Israel conducts vicious major bombing campaigns on a regular basis. The latest one, in 2014, resulted in over 2000 innocent Palestinians massacred, 500 of whom were children. The Palestinians in Gaza live in constant anxiety, knowing that the next massacre is just around the corner. In the West Bank, Israel has massively escalated its home-demolition policies against Palestinians, while it continues to construct Jewish-only colonies on stolen Palestinian land. 2016 has seen a massive escalation in policy of extrajudicial executions, with an execution taking place almost every day, including women and children. Another oppressive policy seeing escalation is that of mass, arbitrary arrests, with currently 7000 Palestinians in Israel’s prisons. Over 10% of total prisoners are held without charge, trial, or release date. All prisoners are subject to systematic ill-treatment, medical neglect, beatings, and torture. Most disturbing is the fact that children aren’t protected, and in fact, Israel’s arrest of children has escalated in the past two years, despite United Nations pressure to end all forms of state child abuse. Within Israel itself there are no less than 50 laws discriminating against the Palestinian citizens of the State, while Israeli parliament members compete for votes, by exhibiting who can make the most genocidal statement ” (Israeli Citizens espousing Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, “From Israeli citizens to Peter Murphy – the answer is clear, boycott apartheid Israel”, BDS, 4 October 2016: https://bdsmovement.net/news/israeli-citizens-peter-murphy-answer-clear-boycott-apartheid-israel ).
Anti-racist Jewish and Israeli Peace and Humanitarian Organizations that oppose Apartheid Israel’s racism, human rights abuses and Palestinian Genocide:
Agudat Israel;
American Council for Judaism;
American Jews Against Zionism;
American Jews for a Just Peace;
American Reform Movement;
Breaking the Silence (Israeli soldiers tell the truth about the Occupation);
B'Tselem;
European Jews for a Just Peace;
Gush Shalom;
Independent Australian Jewish Voices;
Independent Jewish Voices (Canada);
Independent Jewish Voices (UK);
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions;
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network;
Jewish Peace Fellowship;
Jewish Voice for Peace;
Jews Against Genocide;
Jews Against Occupation and Oppression;
Jews Against the Occupation;
Jews Against the War on Gaza;
Jews Against Zionism;
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods;
Jews for Justice for Palestinians;
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return;
Jews Not Zionists;
Neturei Karta;
Not in My Name;
Rabbis for Human Rights;
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network;
The Jewish Bloc;
True Torah Jews;
Numerous anti-racist Jewish Australians have signed the following petition (over 600 as of 20 February 2017): “As Jewish Australians, we are opposed to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Australia, scheduled for mid-February this year.
The Netanyahu government has allowed and encouraged an unprecedented level of settlement growth in the West Bank, demolitions of Palestinian and Bedouin homes and villages, and the retroactive legalising of settlement outposts and expropriation of Palestinian land. He has instigated two major wars against the besieged population of Gaza, committing gross human rights violations in the process. We believe these policies and actions are grave barriers to peace and justice.
Mr Netanyahu has passed anti-democratic legislation and cracked down on dissent within Israel. He is currently under criminal investigations for corruption charges.
Moreover, Mr Netanyahu is coming to Australia following a visit to the United States at the invitation of Donald Trump. His support of Trump has ignored the blatantly islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric invoked by Trump and his White House, which has seen an increase in antisemitic and racist activity in the U.S.
We believe that Netanyahu fosters a culture of fear, intolerance and racism that serves to increase division within Israel and our local communities, and is at odds with the Jewish values that we hold dear.
For these reasons we say no to Netanyahu” ( “Jewish Australians say no to Netanyahu”, February 2017: https://www.change.org/p/open-letter-jewish-australians-say-no-to-netanyahu ).
Compendia of anti-racist Jewish opinion re genocidally racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide:
Edward C. Corrigan, “Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians”, Dissident Voices, 16 April 2010, Jews for Justice for Palestinians: http://jfjfp.com/?p=81816 .
“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm .
Stephen Lendman, “Jews Against Zionism. At its core, Zionism is fundamentally racist, extremist, undemocratic, and militant”, Rense.com, 7 December 2009: http://www.rense.com/general88/lnd.htm .
Joseph Massad, “Sartre, European intellectuals and Zionism””, Electronic Intifada, 31 January 2003: https://electronicintifada.net/content/sartre-european-intellectuals-and-zionism/4384 .
Gideon Polya (editor), “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home
David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel .
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975 ) was outstanding German Jewish political theorist and philosopher. She was the author of “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951), “The Human Condition” (1958) and numerous other important scholarly works. Her criticisms of Zionists and Israel drew inevitable condemnation from Zionists. She coined the term “the banality of evil” to describe Adolph Eichmann (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt ).
Hannah Arendt in “Zionism reconsidered”, 1945: “Thus the social-revolutionary Jewish national movement, which started half a century ago with ideals so lofty that it overlooked the particular realities of the Near East and the general wickedness of the world, has ended – as do most such movements – with the unequivocal support not only of national but of chauvinist claims – claims not against the foes of the Jewish people but against its possible friends and present neighbors … But if the Jewish Commonwealth is proclaimed against the will of the Arabs and without the support of the Mediterranean people, not only financial help but political support will be necessary for a long time to come. And that may turnout to be very troublesome indeed for Jews in this country, who after all have no power to direct political destinies of the Near East. It may eventually be far more of a responsibility than today they imagine or tomorrow can make good.” [1].
Hannah Arendt, in a Letter with Albert Einstein and other scholars decrying Nazi-style Irgun Zionists like Menachaem Begin to the New York Times, 1948: “TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.
The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.
During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ,
HANNAH ARENDT,
ABRAHAM BRICK,
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO,
ALBERT EINSTEIN,
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.,
HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D.,
H.H. HARRIS,
ZELIG S. HARRIS,
SIDNEY HOOK,
FRED KARUSH,
BRURIA KAUFMAN,
IRMA L. LINDHEIM,
NACHMAN MAISEL,
SEYMOUR MELMAN,
MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D.,
HARRY M. OSLINSKY,
SAMUEL PITLICK,
FRITZ ROHRLICH,
LOUIS P. ROCKER,
RUTH SAGIS,
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY,
I.J. SHOENBERG,
SAMUEL SHUMAN,
M. SINGER,
IRMA WOLFE,
STEFAN WOLFE.
New York, Dec. 2, 1948
[1]. Hannah Arendt, “Zionism reconsidered”, The Menorah Journal, Autumn 1945, volume 33, number 2, reproduced in Michael Selzer, editor, “Zionism Reconsidered”, Macmillan, London, 1970, pp213-249.
[2]. Letter by Albert Einstein and many other signatories to the New York Times, 4 December 1948, “New Palestine Party. Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed”,. a letter to The New York Times, published in the "Books" section (Page 12) of the New York Times, Saturday December 4, 1948: http://www.archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948 .
Hannah Arendt (famed anti-racist Jewish German philosopher and political scientist): “The trouble is that Zionism has often thought and said that the evil of antisemitism was necessary for the good of the Jewish people. In the words of a well-known Zionist in a letter to me discussing the original Zionist argumentation: 'The antisemites want to get rid of the Jews, the Jewish State wants to receive them, a perfect match” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Hannah Arendt (anti-racist Jewish German philosopher) in "Zionism Reconsidered" (1944): "Nationalism is bad enough when it trusts in nothing but the rude force of the nation. A nationalism that necessarily and admittedly depends upon the force of a foreign nation is certainly worse. This is the threatened state of Jewish nationalism and of the proposed Jewish state, surrounded inevitably by Arab states and Arab people. Even a Jewish majority in Palestine–nay even a transfer of all Palestine’s Arabs, which is openly demanded by the revisionists–would not substantially change a situation in which Jews must either ask protection from an outside power against their neighbors or come to a working agreement with their neighbors… The Zionists, if they continue to ignore the Mediterranean people and watch out only for the big faraway powers, will appear only as their tools, the agents of foreign and hostile interests. Jews who know their own history should be aware that such a state of affairs will inevitably lead to a new wave of Jew-hatred; the antisemitism of tomorrow will assert that Jews not only profiteered from the presence of foreign big powers in that region but had actually plotted it and hence are guilty of the consequences… Only folly could dictate a policy which trusts a distant imperial power for protection, while alienating the goodwill of neighbors. What then, one is prompted to ask, will be the future policy of Zionism with respect to big powers, and what program will Zionists have to offer for a solution of the Arab-Jewish conflict?… If a Jewish commonwealth is obtained in the near future–with or without partition–it will be due to the political influence of American Jews… But if the Jewish commonwealth is proclaimed against the will of the Arabs and without the support of the Mediterranean peoples, not only financial help but political support will be necessary for a long time to come. And that may turn out to be very troublesome indeed for Jews in this country [the U.S.], who after all have no power to direct the political destinies of the Near East. It may eventually be far more of a responsibility than today they imagine or tomorrow can make good" (Hannah Arendt in "Zionism Reconsidered" , 1944; (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ; Hannah Arendt, “Zionism reconsidered”, The Menorah Journal, Autumn 1945, volume 33,number2,reproducedinMichaelSelzer,editor,“ZionismReconsidered”,Macmillan,London,1970,pp213-249).
Hannah Arendt (1948): “Even if the Jews were to win the war, its end would find the unique possibilities and the unique achievements of Zionism in Palestine destroyed. The land that would come into being would be something quite other than the dream of world Jewry, Zionist and non-Zionist. The ‘victorious’ Jews would live surrounded by an entirely hostile Arab population, secluded into ever-threatened borders, absorbed with physical self-defense to a degree that would submerge all other interests and activities. The growth of a Jewish culture would cease to be the concern of the whole people; social experiments would have to be discarded as impractical luxuries; political thought would center around military strategy… And all this would be the fate of a nation that — no matter how many immigrants it could still absorb and how far it extended its boundaries (the whole of Palestine and Transjordan is the insane Revisionist demand)–would still remain a very small people greatly outnumbered by hostile neighbors. Under such circumstances… the Palestinian Jews would degenerate into one of those small warrior tribes about whose possibilities and importance history has amply informed us since the days of Sparta. Their relations with world Jewry would become problematical, since their defense interests might clash at any moment with those of other countries where large number of Jews lived. Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of the Jewish homeland…” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm).
Isaac Asimov (January 2, 1920– April 6, 1992) came to the US from Russia in 1923. He was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University and thence became one of the world’s greatest science fiction writers. He wrote or edited about 500 books (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov ).
Isaac Asimov on Zionism and nationalist hubris: “As usual, I found myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist and of not particularly valuing my Jewish heritage…. I just think it is more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.” [1].
Isaac Asimov on Zionism and persecuted Jews turning persecutors: “Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye.” [2].
[1]. Isaac Asimov, “In Joy Still Felt”, quoted by Edward Corrigan in “Is it anti-Semitism to defend Palestinian human rights? Jewish opposition to Zionism”, Dissident Voice, 1 September 2009: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/is-it-anti-semitic-to-defend-palestinian-human-rights/ .
[2]. Isaac Asimov, chapter titled “Anti-Semitism” in “I. Asimov”, quoted by Edward Corrigan in “Is it anti-Semitism to defend Palestinian human rights? Jewish opposition to Zionism”, Dissident Voice, 1 September 2009: http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/09/is-it-anti-semitic-to-defend-palestinian-human-rights/ .
Isaac Asimov (famed anti-racist Jewish American biochemist, science fiction novelist and author of the First Law of Robotics: “Thou shalt not harm humans”): “I find myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist ... I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Gilad Atzmon is an anti-racist, Jewish Israeli jazz musician, composer, novelist, commentator and anti-Zionist activist. The moral power of his straightforward anti-racist position is reflected in the extraordinary hostility towards him from Zionists (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Atzmon ).
Gilad Atzmon on racism: “Following the growing outrage of some Zionists as well as crypto Zionists at my critical writings, I find it important to mention that in none of my political texts or interviews have I ever used any kind of racially orientated arguments. My criticism of Zionism and Jewish identity is merely ideological and philosophical.
For me racism is categorically wrong and it is that very realisation that made me into a devoted opponent of Israel and of Zionism.
Anyhow, in case you in find an idea or a thought in my writings that may contain a trace of racism please contact me immediately. I will then either clarify my position or amend my text.” [1].
[1] Gilad Atzmon, “Politics”: http://www.gilad.co.uk/politics.html .
Uri Avnery is a Jewish Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. He was a member of the Irgun terrorist organization and was a member of the Knesset in 1965-74 and 1979-81.Uri Avnery is the author of several books “1948: A Soldier’s Tale, the Bloody Road to Jerusalem” (2008); “Israel’s Vicious Circle” (2008); and “My Friend, the Enemy” (1986) (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery ). .
Uri Avnery on Israeli war crimes against Arabs: “This is the principle that guided the Israeli army in the Gaza War, and, as far as I know, this is a new doctrine: in order to avoid the loss of one single soldier of ours, it is permissible to kill 10, 100 and even 1000 enemy civilians. War without casualties on our side. The numerical result bears witness: more than 1000 people killed in Gaza, a third or two thirds of them (depending on who you ask) civilians, women and children, as against 6 (six) Israeli soldiers killed by enemy fire. (Four more were killed by “friendly” fire.) … If we strip this [Israeli military] doctrine of all ornaments, what remains is a simple principle: the state must protect the lives of its soldiers at any price, without any limit or law. A war of zero casualties. That leads necessarily to a tactic of killing every person and destroying every building that could represent a danger to the soldiers, creating an empty space in front of the advancing troops. Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: from now on, any Israeli decision to start a war in a built-up area is a war crime, and the soldiers who rise up against this crime should be honored. May they be blessed.” [1].
[1]. Uri Avnery, “The Johnny Procedure”, Uri Avnery’s Column, 18 July, 2009: http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html .
Uri Avnery is a Jewish Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. He was a member of the Irgun terrorist organization and was a member of the Knesset in 1965-74 and 1979-81.Uri Avnery is the author of several books “1948: A Soldier’s Tale, the Bloody Road to Jerusalem” (2008); “Israel’s Vicious Circle” (2008); and “My Friend, the Enemy” (1986) (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery ). .
Uri Avnery on Israel war crimes against Arabs: “This is the principle that guided the Israeli army in the Gaza War, and, as far as I know, this is a new doctrine: in order to avoid the loss of one single soldier of ours, it is permissible to kill 10, 100 and even 1000 enemy civilians. War without casualties on our side. The numerical result bears witness: more than 1000 people killed in Gaza, a third or two thirds of them (depending on who you ask) civilians, women and children, as against 6 (six) Israeli soldiers killed by enemy fire. (Four more were killed by “friendly” fire.) … If we strip this [Israeli military] doctrine of all ornaments, what remains is a simple principle: the state must protect the lives of its soldiers at any price, without any limit or law. A war of zero casualties. That leads necessarily to a tactic of killing every person and destroying every building that could represent a danger to the soldiers, creating an empty space in front of the advancing troops. Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: from now on, any Israeli decision to start a war in a built-up area is a war crime, and the soldiers who rise up against this crime should be honored. May they be blessed.” [1].
[1]. Uri Avnery, “The Johnny Procedure”, Uri Avnery’s Column, 18 July, 2009: http://www.avnery-news.co.il/english/index.html .
Uri Avnery (anti-racist Jewish Israeli, former MP and Israeli army officer): “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Uri Avnery: “What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet. In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Dr Tony Balint is a medical General Practitioner at the Blue Horizon Clinic, Yarra Junction, Victoria, Australia (http://www.healthdirectory.com.au/General_practitioners/54288,475888/Dr%20Tony%20Balint,%20Blue%20Horizon%20Clinic/ ).
Dr Tony Balint as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Anna Baltzer is a Jewish-American Columbia graduate, former-Fulbright scholar, the granddaughter of WW2 Jewish Holocaust refugees, and an award-winning lecturer, author, and activist for Palestinian human rights. Anna Baltzer is a volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service in the West Bank and author of the book, “Witness in Palestine: Journal of a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories” (see: http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/aboutanna.html , http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6724.shtm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Baltzer ).
Anna Baltzer on Apartheid Israel (2007): “If Israel desires control the territory that it has for more than two-thirds of its history, and to remain the state exclusively of the Jewish people, and to be democratic as well, it must find a way to create a Jewish majority on a strip of land in which the majority of inhabitants are not Jewish. There are only so many possible solutions: there's forced mass transfer (as was tried successfully in 1948, and is currently advocated by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman), there's mass imprisonment (10,000 plus Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails as I write), there's genocide ... or there is apartheid. The more humane alternatives of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders or becoming a state of all citizens are not even on the bargaining table.Apartheid and segregation failed in South Africa and the United States and they will fail in Israel and Palestine. Ethnocentric nationalism failed in Nazi Germany and it will fail in Zionist Israel. But until they do, the Ibrahims and baby Khalids of Palestine are counting on you and me to do something, to say something, since they themselves cannot. Silence is complicity. We cannot wait for things to get worse. The ethnic cleansing and apartheid have gone on long enough..” [1].
Anna Baltzer on Apartheid Israeli racism , genocide and human rights abuses (2010): “The question about recognising Israel's right to exist is a very interesting one and one that is oftentimes not given too much context. So, like I said, Israel is not the state of the people who have lived there for generations but very exclusively of the Jewish people, including even me, even if I never go there. But not of Palestinians, most of whom have been removed from the area. So when you ask a Palestinian person, do you recognise the right for there to be a state on your historic homeland that explicitly excludes you and your children and your people for eternity simply because of your ethnic and religious background? You know if they say I don't think there's a right for that, that's not anti-Semitism. You know, did the Aboriginals recognise the right for there to be a state that should exclude them? You know they recognised that there was a state created and it should include them, rightfully so, and this question as to Palestinians is really pushing them into a corner and asking them to, not only, you know, see that Israel is discriminating against them but that they're supposed to recognise Israel's right to do it… Actually I am hopeful. I am just not hopeful that it will come through the current negotiations where, you know, it's like a prisoner negotiating with a prison guard, is what we see today. I don't think that's going to bear much fruition of peace. However, if we look at historic models and what's happening today with the segregated roads in the West Bank and all of different kinds of segregation is that we see a real link to apartheid South Africa and what happened there. And likewise the struggle against it where people around the world said, you know, if our governments are not going to take a strong stand on this issue and stop the, pouring money into what's happening, we as citizens of the world are not going to profit off of this anymore as individuals and institutions. And thus began a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions which has grown rapidly today, but towards apartheid Israel, to say that until Israel complies with international law we're not going to treat it like a normal country anymore.” [2].
[1]. Anna Baltzer, “The crime of being born Palestinian”, Electronic Intifada, 25 March 2007: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6724.shtm .
[2]. Anna Baltzer interviewed by Mark Colvin, “Activist outlines possibility for 5 new Palestinian Plan”, ABC Radio National. PM, 25 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3047744.htm .
Sivan Barak is an anti-racist Jewish Australian human rights and peace activist and a member of MEPEACE (see: http://mepeace.org/about and http://mepeace.org/profile/SivanBarak ).
Sivan Barak on her realization of the immense injustice to the Palestinians (2012): “Questioning is an incessant quality that has affected every aspect of my life … From the day I stared into the eyes of a Palestinian man and saw the human being, I started to see and fight against the injustices my people had instigated against his people. A cloud lifted in me and in those who watched us. It was palpable. The path has at times been terrifying and ground shattering, but I will remain on it until peace and justice are set in place in the land I love, that is my home and his.” [1, 2].
[1]. Sivan Barak “Am I an activist?” in “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists”, edited by Avigail Abarbanel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) (pp 3 & 12).
[2]. Sivan Barak quoted in Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Beyond Tribal Loyalties”. Stories of anti-racist Jews”, MWC News, 18 January 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/24184-gideonpolya-beyond-tribal-loyalties.html .
Nir Baram (anti-racist Jewish Israeli writer and author of “A Land without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank” ) commenting on the neo-fascist dominance in Apartheid Israel, the one-state solution and the equal rights struggle in Palestine (2015): “The reason I voted Meretz is that I feared its extinction – and, under the new electoral threshold law, it was indeed close to disappearing. To Meretz’s credit, it has to be said that in this campaign it was the only party, along with the Joint List of the Arab parties, that mentioned an issue that was buried in the recesses of the voters consciousness: the Palestinians. Two states? One state? Occupation? Palestinian rights? The subject was of no interest to the Jewish public… It is our obligation to contemplate new solutions and, above all, to question the feasibility of separation models. The Palestinians are doing so: Groups of them are working for the creation of one state or for a new two-state model that isn’t based on separation. The most critical struggle is to achieve equal rights for everyone living in this space, Jews and Palestinians – the political practicality is only a means to that end. Its also essential to find new partners in Jewish society for the equal-rights struggle, because Israel’s old, entrenched left is too feeble to broaden the circles on its own. In the wake of the election results, everyone in my close circle is in mourning and, in despair, even talking about leaving. I too feel that I have been dealt a vicious blow. But for those who have decided to make their life and their children’s lives here – there is no choice but to prepare for the fight ahead. I will never accept an apartheid state, and for me the struggle for equal rights for Jews and Palestinians is not over” (Nir Baram, “Time to give up on two states but not on coexistence”, Haaretz, 28 March 2015: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-where-do-we-go-from-here-1.5342906 ).
Roseanne Barr (anti-racist Jewish American comedian, writer, director, presidential candidate): “I am sick of Israel and I am sick of Zionists. They are propped up by evangelical Christians who cannot wait for the Arabs to kill them so that their genocidal war god whom they misname Jesus can come back" (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Bat Shalom is an Israeli national feminist grassroots organization of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli women working together for a genuine peace grounded in a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, respect for human rights, and an equal voice for Jewish and Arab women within Israeli society (see: http://www.batshalom.org/about.php ).
Bat Shalom, The Jerusalem Link” declaration of principles: “ We, Palestinian and Israeli women, united in a joint effort to bring about a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace between our two peoples, affirm our commitment to working together, within the framework of The Jerusalem Link, for the rapid realization of our common vision of peace. This effort is based on the following principles. Recognition of the right to self-determination of both peoples in the land, through the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel on the June 4, 1967 boundaries. The whole city of Jerusalem constitutes two capitals for two states. The Oslo Declaration of Principles, signed on September 13, 1993, and all subsequent agreements must be implemented immediately and in their entirety. The permanent settlement negotiations must resume without any delays on the basis of the agreed agenda of the Declaration of Principles, the terms of reference being all relevant UN Resolutions, including 242 and 338. It is our conviction that all Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 are illegal, as stipulated by international law, and violate the requirements for peace. Palestinian: Israel accepts its moral, legal, political and economic responsibility for the plight of Palestinian refugees and thus must accept the right of return according to relevant UN resolutions. Israeli: Israel's recognition of its responsibility in the creation of the Palestinian refugees in 1948 is a pre-requisite to finding a just and lasting resolution of the refugee problem in accordance with relevant UN resolutions. Respect for international conventions, charters and laws and the active involvement of the international community in the peace process are crucial to its success. The realization of political peace will pave the way for mutual understanding and trust, genuine security, and constructive cooperation on the basis of equality and respect for the national and human rights of both peoples. Women must be central partners in the peace process. Their active and equal participation in decision making and negotiations is crucial to the fulfillment of a just and viable peace. We women are committed to a peaceful solution of our conflict, also as a means for the promotion of democratic and non-violent norms and the enhancement of civil society. A peaceful solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territory, including Lebanon and Syria, are prerequisites for a just and comprehensive peace. This will pave the way for a Middle East characterized by good neighborly relations and regional cooperation. We call on women and men in the region and elsewhere to join in making our vision of peace a reality.” [1].
[1]. Bat Shalom, The Jerusalem Link” declaration of principles: http://www.batshalom.org/jlink_principles.php .
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi is a professor of psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel, and the author of “Original Sins : Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel” (1998), “The Israeli Connection” (1987) as well as works about the dynamics of religion, most recently Prolegomena to the Psychological Study of Religion (1989) and Despair to Deliverance (1991) (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Beit-Hallahmi ).
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi on genocidal racist Zionism (1998): Looking at Zionism without taboos means seeing the hard reality of the domination and oppression it has created. Out of the original sins of the world against the Jews grew the original sins of Zionism against the Palestinians. The issues are often raised through a counting and recounting of massacres and victims on both sides. The problem is one of principles, not atrocities. Even if nobody died, there is something wrong with Zionist principles. The problem is a moral one. Raising the moral question is not a mark of idealism but of realism.
Israelis seem to be haunted by a curse. It is the curse of the original sin against the native Arabs. How can Israel be discussed without recalling the dispossession and exclusion of non-Jews? This is the most basic fact about Israel, and no understanding of Israeli reality is possible without it. The original sin haunts and torments Israelis; it marks everything and taints everybody. The memory of the original sin poisons the blood and marks every moment of existence.
Can we speak of an Israeli 'collective responsibility' for the colonialist enterprise of Zionism?
Are all Israelis responsible for this sin? People cannot be held responsible for a situation created long before they were born, and this is the case for most Israelis. They have been born into a colonialist structure which favours them over the class of non-Jews. They cannot be blamed for it. At the same time, a person may be held responsible for the continuation of a colonialist situation, once he is in a position to change things. Most Israelis today, born after 1950, cannot be held responsible for early Zionist injustices. They can, and should, be held responsible for the present reality of injustice, which is a direct sequel of early Zionist principles.
All Israelis have come to recognise Zionism's original sin against the Palestinians. The terrible secret of the injustice is known to everybody, but cannot be openly faced.” [1].
[1]. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “The Israeli Question”, epilogue from “Original Sins”, Pluto Press, London, pp.207-211: http://israel-academia-monitor.com/index.php?advice_id=104&cookie_lang=en&page_data[id]=172&type=large_advic .
Professor Andrew Benjamin, PhD (University of Warwick), DEA (University of Paris 7), MA (Australian National University), BA (Australian National University) states: “I am a graduate of Universities in Australia, France and the UK. My predominate area of interest is philosophical aesthetics. With that domain the areas on which my work concentrates are painting and architecture” (see: http://arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/people/andrew-benjamin/ ).
Professor Andrew Benjamin as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Phyllis Bennis (anti-racist Jewish American writer, activist, and political commentator) (2015): “Obama’s challenge, then, is to craft an entirely new approach to dealing with Tel Aviv. It’s time to rethink the old assumptions, driven by pro-Israel lobbies and by outdated Cold War strategies, that called for providing Israel with uncritical support, diplomatic impunity, guaranteed military protection, and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military aid. Those have been the key features of the U.S.-Israeli relationship for at least 48 years, and they have failed. They’ve failed to bring Israel’s nuclear arsenal under international inspection or to make Israel sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. They’ve failed to bring about an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, its rejection of the Palestinians’ internationally guaranteed right of return, or its discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel. They’ve failed to encourage an Israel that respects human rights and accepts equality for all as an essential national goal. As Obama considers the possibility — so long in coming — of reducing its diplomatic protection of Israel at the United Nations and elsewhere, his administration should keep in mind that litany of failures. The U.S. relationship with Israel has sustained and cosseted an over-armed, nuclearized state that not only expropriates and occupies other peoples’ lands and deprives 20 percent of its own citizens of crucial national rights, but has also worked deliberately to derail U.S. and international negotiations with Iran. The United States can no longer welcome Israeli leaders who rely on openly racist provocations to win votes in support of apartheid policies or foolish wars” (Phyllis Bennis, “Jim Crow in the Holy Land”, Foreign Policy in Focus, 20 March 2015: https://fpif.org/the-jim-crow-holy-land/ ).
Elmer Berger (anti-racist Jewish American, anti-Zionist Jewish Reform rabbi and executive director of the American Council for Judaism from its founding in 1942 until 1955) in the introduction to his book “A Partisan History of Judaism”: “There are those who see Judaism as ‘the religion of the Jewish People.’ This book will not please them. For it indicates, unmistakably, that the origins of Judaism were not in ‘the Jewish people’ and that the best and finest of Judaism today transcends the Jewish people… Judaism is to do justice and to have mercy and to walk humbly with God; and all the rest is commentary and of secondary importance” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Ray Bergmann is an anti-racist Jewish Australian writer, human rights activist and peace activist.
Ray Bergmann on his realization of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (2012) “When I was seventeen and in my final year of high school, my parents were beginning to despair of the views I was expressing on Zionism and on the Jewish community and its leadership. I claimed that the Jewish community was complicit in crimes that, while not of the same magnitude as the Nazi crimes against the Jews, were nonetheless of a quality that felt to me disturbingly similar. These crimes resulted in the apparently permanent displacement of most of the non-Jewish population of the Holy Land, and the persecution and denial of basic human rights of those who remained… I read “The Arabs in Israel, 1948-1966” by Sabri Jurays, Sabri Jurays’ book had a profound effect on me. It introduced me to well-documented evidence about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” [1, 2].
[1]. Ray Bergmann, “The road to hell is paved with tribal loyalties” in “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists”, edited by Avigail Abarbanel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) (pp 19, 23).
[2]. Ray Bergmann quoted in Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Beyond Tribal Loyalties”. Stories of anti-racist Jews”, MWC News, 18 January 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/24184-gideonpolya-beyond-tribal-loyalties.html .
Rabbi Joseph Berman (anti-racist Jewish American rabbi and a key figure in Jewish Voice for Peace, JVP) (2017): “We need to stop the confirmation of David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel.
Are you ready to join me? Because JVP specifically, even uniquely, needs to take him on.
David Friedman has zero diplomatic experience - he’s actually Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer. But he shares with Jared Kushner and other members of Trump’s inner circle shockingly extreme views on Israel/Palestine.
Friedman has denied the existence of Palestinian refugees, who are recognized under international law, called liberal Jews “kapos” for taking even measured efforts to change Israeli policies, advocated annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and endorsed discriminatory screening of Muslim immigrants to the United States.
And he’s not just a supporter of illegal, Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank - he’s the board chair of American Friends of Beit El, one of the oldest and most violent settlements in the West Bank.
David Friedman is a passionate activist for permanent apartheid and occupation.
And his appointment would bring all of these policy disasters closer:
Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem - in fact, he’s already declared his decision to live in Jerusalem personally.
Annexing Ma’ale Adumim or even all of the West Bank. Yesterday even the NYTimes described Friedman as in “closer political step with Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing rivals.” (yes, it is more than possible to out-flank Netanyahu to his right)
Deepening mutual aid between US and the Israeli governments on surveillance projects (think registries) and border militarization (think walls).
There isn’t a single statement of his that we’ve been able to find that shows even a modicum of respect for Palestinians or Palestinian human rights” (Rabbi Joseph Berman, “We need to stop the confirmation of David Friedman as US Ambassador to Israel”, Jewish Voices for Peace, January 2017).
Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC (distinguished Jewish British human rights lawyer and supporter of Humanism) , co-signatory of an Open Letter re the 2014 Gaza Massacre (2014): “We demand that Britain will not buy or supply military equipment that has, or could be, used or tested as part of Israel's illegal occupation or as part of its collective punishment of the Palestinian people” (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, “MPs, actors, authors and musicians among 21,000 demanding arms embargo on Israel”, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 23 July 2014: https://www.palestinecampaign.org/mps-actors-authors-musicians-among-21000-demanding-arms-embargo-israel/ ).
Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) was an early Zionist and is credited with coining the term :”Zionism”. He left the Zionists in 1899, became a devout Orthodox Jew and was necessarily implacably opposed to the Zionist heresy. He was for a time a member of the anti-Zionist Agudas Yisrael (“The Union of Israel”), the Orthodox Jewish organization founded in 1912 in opposition to Zionism but one wing of which unfortunately succumbed, joined the Zionists and is now an Israeli political party.
Nathan Birnbaum, decrying political Zionism, 1919: “And is it at all possible that we, who regard Judaism as our one and only treasure, should ever be able to compete with such expert demagogues and loud self-advertisers as they [the Zionists]? It is surely not necessary that we should. We are, after all, still the mountains and they the grain, and all we need to do is to gather all our forces in a world organization of religious Jews, and it will follow of itself, and without the application of any great political cunning on our part, that we shall have it in our power to prevent what must needs be prevented and to carry out what we have to carry out. But there is no need first to create this world organization of religious Jews. It is already in existence. The world knows its name, it is Agudas Yisroel [The Union of Israel].” [1].
[1]. Nathan Birnbaum, “In bondage to our fellow Jews”, 1919 from Nathan Birnbaum, "Series of Essays on Agudas Yisroel", London, 1944 reproduced in Michael Selzer, editor, “Zionism Reconsidered”, Macmillan, London, 1970.
William Blum (born 1933) is an anti-racist Jewish American author, historian, and powerful critic of US foreign policy. He is the author of the best-selling book “Rogue State” and other books (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blum ).
William Blum on the Jewish Holocaust and the evil of Zionism as the worst things top have happened to the Jewish people (2010): “The worst thing that ever happened to the Jewish people is the Holocaust. The second worst thing that ever happened to the Jewish people is the state of Israel.
Things internationally are so dispiriting there's nothing left to do but fantasize. I picture Turkey, as a member of NATO, demanding that the alliance come to its defense after being attacked by Israel. Under Article 5 of the NATO charter an armed attack on one member is deemed to constitute an armed attack on all members. That is the ostensible reason NATO is fighting in Afghanistan — the attack against the United States on September 11, 2001 is regarded as an attack on all NATO members (disregarding the awkward fact that Afghanistan as a country had nothing to do with the attack). The Israeli attack on a Turkish-flagged ship, operated by a Turkish humanitarian organization, killing nine Turkish nationals and wounding many more can certainly constitute an attack upon a NATO member.
So, after the United States, the UK, Germany, France and other leading NATO members offer their ridiculous non-sequitur excuses why they can't ... umm ... er ... invoke Article 5, and the international media swallows it all without any indigestion, Turkey demands that Israel should at least lose its formal association with NATO as a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue. This too is dismissed with scorn by the eminent NATO world powers on the grounds that it would constitute a victory for terrorism. And anti-Semitism of course...” [1].
William Blum (author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2”, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower”, “West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir”, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire”) on “Israel's genocide against the Palestinians” (2012): “And once again, the United States is participating in the overthrow of a secular Mideast government. At the same time, the Muslim fundamentalists in Syria, as in Libya, can have no illusions that America loves them. A half century of US assaults on Mideast countries, the establishment of American military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and US support for dictatorships and for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians have relieved them of such fanciful thoughts. So why is the United States looking to forcefully intervene once again? A tale told many times — world domination, oil, Israel, ideology, etc. Assad of Syria, like Gaddafi of Libya, has shown little promise as a reliable client state so vital to the American Empire. It's only the barrier set up by Russia and China on the UN Security Council that keeps NATO (aka the United States) from unleashing thousands of airborne missiles to "liberate" Syria as they did Libya” [2].
[1]. William Blum, “”The state of the Jewish people”, Countercurrents, 11 June 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/blum110610.htm and William Blum, “The worst thing that ever happened to the Jewish people is the Holocaust. The second worst thing that ever happened to the Jewish people is the state of Israel” The Anti-Empire Report, 10 June 2010 : http://williamblum.org/aer/read/82 .
[2]. William Blum, “Syria, The Story Thus Far”, Countercurrents, 3 October, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/blum031012.htm .
Joel Brand (1906 –1964) was a Jewish Hungarian Holocaust hero associated with the Aid and Rescue Committee involved in saving Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe by getting them to the relative safety of Hungary. Joel Brand also played a prominent role in trying to save the Hungarian Jews from deportation to the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp. The Joel Brand scheme to trade 0.7 million Hungarian Jews for 10,000 trucks, 8,000 tons of coffee, 800 tons of tea, 200 tons of cocoa, and 2 million bars of soap was opposed by the Zionists who also evidently persuaded pro-Zionist Churchill to also oppose the scheme (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Brand ; Alex Weissberg, “Advocate for the Dead. The story of Joel Brand”, Andre Deutsch, London, 1958; Gideon Polya, “Biochemical targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”, Taylor & Francis, CRC Press, London & New York, 2003, pp280, 281, 511: http://www.amazon.com/Biochemical-Targets-Plant-Bioactive-Compounds/dp/0415308291 and http://books.google.com.au/books?id=LJKmjujwoW4C&dq=%22Biochemical+Targets+of+Plant+Bioactive+Compounds%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=l99oSsjPKoTitgPZ4JyXBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4 ). According to eminent Jewish historian Professor Sir Martin Gilbert (Oxford University; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gilbert ) 0.2-0.4 million Hungarian Jews perished out of a population of 0.7 million (see Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph, London) [0.2 million estimate] and Martin Gilbert “Could Britain have done more to stop the horrors of Auschwitz?”, Times Online, 27 January 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article507013.ece [0.4 million estimate] ).
Joel Brand on wartime Zionist leaders: “Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry's official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear.” [1].
[1]. Wikipedia, “Joel Brand”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Brand .
Lenni Brenner is an American Trotskyist Marxist writer, civil right activist, peace activist, anti-Zionist and author of the book “Zionism in the Age of Dictators”. He has been very important in exposing pre-war and wartime links between Zionists and the German Nazi regime. With African –American activist Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) he founded the Committee Against Zionism and Racism (for details see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenni_Brenner ).
Lenni Brenner on Zionist collaboration with the Nazis: “ Zionist factions competed for the honor of allying to Hitler. By 1940-41, the "Stern Gang," among them Yitzhak Shamir, later Prime Minister of Israel, presented the Nazis with the "Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany."
Avraham Stern and his followers announced that "The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that: 1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO. 2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and, 3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East. Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side."
They hanged people all over Europe after WW II for notes to the Nazis like these. But these treasons against the Jews were virtually unknown in the run up to the creation of the Zionist state in May 1948. Ninety percent of America's Jews suddenly became emotional pro-Zionists. With Democrats, Republicans and even the Communist-organized Progressive Party competing for Jewish votes in the November Presidential election, Harry Truman's monetary aid bought arms from pro-Soviet Czechoslovakia, and an Israel was born, run by the German Zionists' cothinkers in Jerusalem.
Jews and other Americans still know little of Zionism's sordid past. But today only programed fanatics can come away pro-Zionist after reading plain facts. Indeed, according to the American Jewish Identity Survey (2001), less than 22% of all Jews declare themselves Zionist. Opposition to Zionism also grows among liberal educated gentiles, every time their declared enemy, Pat Robertson, howls in favor of Orthodox Israel.” [1].
[1]. Lenni Brenner, “51 documents: Zionist collaboration with the Nazis”, CounterPunch, 23 December 2002: http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner1223.html .
Michael Brull is an anti-racist Jewish Australian writer who writes in particular about Apartheid Israel . In his own words: “Michael Brill a leftist Jew, and his views should not be taken to represent the views of anyone else. His view that Palestinians are human has outraged the Zionist lobbies” (Michael Brull’s Blog, Independent Australian Jewish Voices: http://iajv99.wordpress.com/commentators-blogs/michael-brulls-blog/ ).
Michael Brull writing about the latest Apartheid Israeli Gaza Massacre (17 July 2014): “Israel’s bloody Apartheid: what happened and why you should be outraged… The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has issued daily briefings, meticulously documenting major Israeli attacks on Gaza. Its latest report found that 181 Palestinians had been killed so far by Israel, 147 of them civilian, including 36 children and 29 women. They also found 1181 Palestinians had been injured so far…[conspicuously silent] Australian politicians have not covered themselves in glory in response to the onslaught on Gaza… The Greens can help find out the extent of Australia’s military cooperation with Israel, and back Amnesty’s call for an arms embargo, to “send a clear message that they will not facilitate further violations of international humanitarian law”. But it is up to the rest of us to persuade Australians that we should not support Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.” [1].
[1]. Michael Brull, “Israel’s bloody Apartheid: what happened and why you should be outraged”, New Matilda, 17 July 2014: https://newmatilda.com/2014/07/17/israels-bloody-apartheid-what-happened-and-why-you-should-be-outraged .
Martin Buber (1878 – 1965) was an outstanding Austrian-born Jewish philosopher. A Zionist and immigrant to Palestine he nevertheless, informed by Humanity and his I-Thou religious existentialism, argued for non-racism and a bi-national state (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Buber ).
Martin Buber, “The National Home and The National Riots in Palestine”, speech in Berlin, 1929 after Palestinian riots: “Every responsible relationship between an individual and his fellow begins through the power of genuine imagination, as if we were the residents of Palestine and the others were the immigrants who were coming into the country in increasing numbers, year by year, taking it away from us. How would we react to events? Only if we know this will it be possible to minimize the injustice we must do in order to survive and to live the life which we are not only entitled but obliged to live, since we live for the eternal mission, which has been imbedded within us since our creation.” [1].
Martin Buber, “The Bi-National Approach to Zionism”, 1947: “We describe our program [that of the Ichud Association] as that of a bi-national state—that is, we aim at a social structure based on the reality of two peoples living together. The foundations of this structure cannot be the traditional ones of majority and minority, but must be different. We do not mean just any bi-national state, but this particular one, with its particular conditions, i.e. a bi-national state which embodies in its basic principle a Magna Charta Reservationum, the indispensable postulate of the rescue of the Jewish people. This is what we need and not a “Jewish State”.” [1].
[1]. Martin Buber quoted by Leonard Schwartz, “After the Assault on Gaza”, Common Ground News Service, 26 March 2009: http://www.commongroundnews.org/article.php?id=25104&lan=en&sid=0&sp=0&isNew= .
Martin Buber (anti-racist Jewish Austrian philosopher who opposed establishment of a Jewish state, supported Arab rights in Palestine, and argued for a joint Arab-Jewish state) in an open letter to Mahatma Gandhi: “You, Mahatma Gandhi, who know of the connection between tradition and future, should not associate yourself with those who pass over our cause without understanding or sympathy. But you say ? and I consider it to be the most significant of all the things you tell us ? that Palestine belongs to the Arabs and that it is therefore "wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs." Here I must add a personal note in order to make clear to you on what premises I desire to consider your thesis. I belong to a group of people who from the time Britain conquered Palestine have not ceased to strive for the concluding of a genuine peace between Jew and Arab… Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land ? to "serve" it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them: we want to serve with them” (Martn Buber, “Martin Buber’s letter to Gandhi regarding Palestine”, Jewish Virual Library: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/martin-buber-s-open-letter-to-gandhi-regarding-palestine ).
There are three basic calls that I end up making that are coming from Palestinian activists or scholars who have been working on this issue for a long time. The first is to establish a firm constitutional basis for equality for all citizens, regardless of what their religion might be, or their ethnicity or race. The second call is a call to end the occupation, which is illegal and an extension of a colonial project. I consider both the West Bank and Gaza to be colonised, even though Gaza is not occupied in the same way that the West Bank is. The Israeli government and military control all goods that pass in or out of that area, and they have restricted employment and building material that would allow Palestinians to rebuild homes and structures that were destroyed by bombardment. The third call is probably the most controversial, but I do think that a lot of thought has to be given to how the right of return might be conceptualised, and how that right might be honoured, whether it's via resettlement or compensation. Some plans involve a return to areas where people have lived, not necessarily to the exact homes they lived in. But people who have been made stateless by military occupation are entitled to repatriation, and then the question is to which state, or to what polity or area? Those who have had their goods taken away are entitled to compensation of some kind. These are basic international laws” People who expect enmity to suddenly convert into love are probably using the wrong model. Living with one another can be unhappy, wretched, ambivalent, even full of antagonism, but all of that can play out in the political sphere without recourse to expulsion or genocide. And that is our obligation” (Ray Filar, “Willing the impossible: an interview with Judith Butler”, Open Democracy, 5 July 2014: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/ray-filar/willing-impossible-interview-with-judith-butler ).
B'Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (see: http://www.btselem.org/English/About_BTselem/Index.asp ).
B’Tselem: “The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel … B'Tselem in Hebrew literally means "in the image of," and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The word is taken from Genesis 1:27 "And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him." It is in this spirit that the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights." [1].
[1]. B’Tselem, “About B’Tselem”: http://www.btselem.org/English/About_BTselem/Index.asp .
B’Tselem (Israeli human rights group; the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) (2021): “Today, B’Tselem published a new position paper that details how the Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it contols (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.In the position paper B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians. The key tool Israel uses to implement the principle of Jewish supremacy is engineering space geographically, demographically and politically. Jews go about their lives in a single, contiguous space where they enjoy full rights and self-determination. In contrast, Palestinians live in a space that is fragmented into several units, each with a different set of rights – given or denied by Israel, but always inferior to the rights accorded to Jews. The Israeli regime pursues this organizing principle in four major areas: Land… Citizenship… Freedom movement… Political participation” (B’Tselem, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid”, 12 January 2021: https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20210112_this_is_apartheid ).
B’Tselem (Israeli human rights group; the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) (2021): “More than 14 million people [14.4 million] , roughly half of them Jews [47%] and the other half Palestinians [57%] live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under a single rule. The common perception in public, political, legal and media discourse is that two separate regimes operate side by side in this area, separated by the Green Line. One regime, inside the borders of the sovereign State of Israel, is a permanent democracy with a population of about nine million, all Israeli citizens. The other regime, in the territories Israel took over in 1967, whose final status is supposed to be determined in future negotiations, is a temporary military occupation imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects. Over time, the distinction between the two regimes has grown divorced from reality. This state of affairs has existed for more than 50 years – twice as long as the State of Israel existed without it. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers now reside in permanent settlements east of the Green Line, living as though they were west of it. East Jerusalem has been officially annexed to Israel’s sovereign territory, and the West Bank has been annexed in practice. Most importantly, the distinction obfuscates the fact that the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is organized under a single principle: advancing and cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. All this leads to the conclusion that these are not two parallel regimes that simply happen to uphold the same principle. There is one regime governing the entire area and the people living in it, based on a single organizing principle… In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. A key method in pursuing this goal is engineering space differently for each group… In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. A key method in pursuing this goal is engineering space differently for each group” (B’Tselem, “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid”, 12 January 2021: https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid ).
Michael Chabon (Pulitzer Prize-winning, anti-racist Jewish American writer and author of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”) (2016): “Once you see [the Occupied West Bank] for yourself, it is pretty obvious, I think, to any human being with a heart and a mind, it is pretty clear what to feel about it. It is the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life… As a Jew and someone who has felt connected both to Israel and also to the Old Testament narratives, it actually does mean something to me to be in Hebron, to be where supposedly Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebecca and Leah are all buried. From my point of view, to see that place being dishonored and made less sacred and less holy by the presence of this incredibly cruel and unjust machinery, some literal machinery and figurative machinery of oppression, it offends me…I have seen bad things in my own country in America. There is plenty of horrifying injustice in the U.S. prison system, the "second Jim Crow" it is often called. Our drug laws in the United States are grotesquely unjust. I know to some degree what I am talking about. This is the worst thing I have ever seen, just purely in terms of injustice. If saying that is going to lose me readers, I don’t want those readers. They can go away and never come back” (Oren Ziv, “Q&A - Michael Chabon talks occupation, injustice and literature after visit to West Bank”, Forward, 24 April 2016: https://forward.com/culture/books/339119/qa-michael-chabon-talks-occupation-injustice-and-literature-after-visit-to/ and David Palumbo-Liu, “Backing BDS: another Pulitzer winner comes out for Palestinian rights”, Salon, 22 June 2016: https://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/backing_bds_another_pulitzer_winner_comes_out_for_palestinian_rights/ ).
Professor Noam Chomsky is an outstanding, anti-racist Jewish American linguistics scholar at the prestigious, 73-Nobel-Laureate Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, Massachusetts, USA (for detailed biography see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky ; for links to many of Professor Chomsky’s writings also see his website : http://www.chomsky.info/ ).
Professor Noam Chomsky and other outstanding writers: “The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.
(Signed) Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy. Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn.” [1].
Professor Noam Chomsky re Apartheid Israel and Apartheid South Africa, 2008 : “There are similarities and differences. Within Israel itself, there is serious discrimination, but it's very far from South African Apartheid. Within the occupied territories, it's a different story. In 1997, I gave the keynote address at Ben-Gurion University in a conference on the anniversary of the 1967 war. I read a paragraph from a standard history of South Africa. No comment was necessary. Looking more closely, the situation in the OT differs in many ways from Apartheid. In some respects, South African Apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true. To mention one example, White South Africa depended on Black labor. The large majority of the population could not be expelled. At one time Israel relied on cheap and easily exploited Palestinian labor, but they have long ago been replaced by the miserable of the earth from Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear. And it is no secret that the policies that have taken shape accord well with the recommendations of Moshe Dayan right after the 1967 war: Palestinians will "continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave."” [2].
Professor Noam Chomsky re Gaza Concentration Camp, “huge prison”, 15 July 2006: “If there's a conflict going on, aside physical war, not in a military conflict going on, abduction -- if soldiers are captured, they are to be treated humanely. But it is not a crime at the level of capture of civilians and bringing them across the border into your own country. That's a serious crime. And that's the one that's not reported. And, in fact, remember that -- I mean, I don't have to tell you that there are constant attacks going on in Gaza, which is basically a prison, huge prison, under constant attack all the time: economic strangulation, military attack, assassinations, and so on. In comparison with that, abduction of a soldier, whatever one thinks about it, doesn't rank high in the scale of atrocities.” [3].
Professor Noam Chomsky to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting divestment in Israel: “I would like to express my strong support for the work of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), specifically their calls for divestment from US corporations that are directly involved in Israel’s criminal activities in the occupied territories. I would also like to commend the important educational and organizational efforts that laid the basis for the call. The SJP statement … is fully defensible in moral and legal terms. The organizers deserve congratulations and support for having once again led Hampshire College to spearhead opposition to major crimes, as it did 30 years ago in its opposition to South African apartheid, opening a path that others could follow.” [4].
[1]. Letter from Noam Chomsky with Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy, Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn re Palestine, Peninsular Peace and Justice Centre, Palo Alto, Califoirnai, USA, 19 July 2006: http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060726115326120&query=zinn .
[2]. Interviews with Professors Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, OpEd News, 25 September 2008: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Noam-Chomsky-Ilan-Pappe-In-by-Duffer2205-080925-957.html .
[3]. Professor Noam Chomsky interviewed by Amy Goodman, Conn Hallinan, “Israel/Palestine”, ZNet, 15 July 2006: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/3566 .
[4]. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting divestment in Israel, “Endorsements“, 2009: http://www.hsjp.org/endorsements/ .
Noam Chomsky (famed anti-racist Jewish American writer and linguistics professor at 85-Nobel-Laureate MIT): “In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by "apartheid" you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Noam Chomsky: “There is good reason to believe that he [Uri Avnery] is right. Israel is deliberately turning itself into one of the most hated countries in the world, and is also losing the allegiance of the population of the West, including younger American Jews, who are unlikely to tolerate its persistent shocking crimes for long. Decades ago, I wrote that those who call themselves “supporters of Israel” are in reality supporters of its moral degeneration and probable ultimate destruction. Regrettably, that judgment looks more and more plausible. Meanwhile we are quietly observing a rare event in history, what the late Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling called “politicide,” the murder of a nation — at our hands” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Michel Chossudovsky (anti-racist Jewish-Russian-origin Canadian economics professor and humanitarian activist) promoted the following petition to the UK parliament signed by over 100,000 (September 2015): “Benjamin Netanyahu is to hold talks in London this September. Under international law he should be arrested for war crimes upon arrival in the U.K for the massacre of over 2000 civilians in 2014” (Michel Chossudovsky, “ An arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu when he arrives in London on September 9”, Global Research, 8 September 2015: http://www.globalresearch.ca/an-arrest-warrant-for-israels-prime-minister-netanyahu-when-he-arrives-in-london-on-september-9/5474750 ).
Michel Chossudovsky (anti-racist Jewish-Russian-origin Canadian economics professor and humanitarian activist) re the petition to the UK parliament signed by over 100,000 (September 2015): “Important Updates: Friday September 4th, more than 98,000 British citizens and residents have signed the petition. (see below). Saturday September 5th, we reached more than 100,000 signatures calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upon his official state visit to the United Kingdom scheduled for September. Sunday: More than 104,000 have signed the petition. Upon reaching the 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in the House of Commons. Our message to Netanyahu: you are a war criminal under international law. We call upon the people of Israel to initiate legal procedures within Israel against Prime Minister Netanyahu for the crimes committed against the people of Palestine” (Michel Chossudovsky, “Netanyahu is a war criminal: sign the petition to the British Parliament . “Netanyahu to be arrested when he arrives in London””, Global Research, 4 September 2015: http://www.globalresearch.ca/netanyahu-is-a-war-criminal-sign-the-petition-to-the-british-parliament/5469304 ).
Michel Chossudovsky (anti-racist Jewish Canadian, emeritus professor of economics, University of Ottawa, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC)) (2020): “Israel is currently in the process of implementing the illegal annexation of Palestinian lands. The issue of “illegality” must be put in context. We are dealing with a broader issue: Crimes against Humanity and Genocide against the People of Palestine. Annexation is a crime against Humanity. And the Western governments which support Israel’s actions or turn a blind eye are complicit. Donald Trump has given the Green Light to Netanyahu. Trump is responsible for supporting and endorsing an illegal and criminal undertaking” (Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal and Michel Chossudovsky, “Israel guilty of crimes against humanity, genocide against the people of Palestine”, Global Research, 2 July 2020: https://www.globalresearch.ca/kuala-lumpur-tribunal-finds-israel-guilty-of-crimes-against-humanity-genocide/5359404 .
[Editor note on direct Netanyahu complicity in Israeli war crimes: present Israeli PM Netanyahu was a member of the IDF from 1967-1973 illegally operating in Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Jordanian territory; leader of neo-Nazi Likud Party in 1993; PM 1996-1999; Foreign Affairs Minister , (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments; official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud in 2006; 2009 – present, 3 terms as PM of Apartheid Israel. Netanyahu was thus directly complicit as a MP, government minister or PM in the 1989-2002 illegal Israeli occupation of Lebanon; the 2008–2009 Gaza Massacre (aka Operation Cast Lead; 1,417 Palestinian killed, 5,300 wounded), the 2012 Gaza Massacre (aka Operation Pillar of Defense; 174 Palestinians killed, 1,000 wounded) and the 2014 Gaza Massacre (aka Operation Protective Edge; 2,310 Palestinians killed, 11,000 wounded, 500,000 people displaced). From 2004 to 2014, Gaza rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza from 2004 onwards killed 32 Israelis, with overall deaths including 27 Israeli civilians, 5 foreign nationals, 5 IDF soldiers, and at least 11 Palestinians, with the injured totalling more than 1900 people (“Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel ).
One notes that the homicide rate in Israel is 24 per million (“Crime in Israel”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Israel ) and with an average Israeli population of 7.42 million in the period 2005-2015 (UN Population Division: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/ ) one can estimate 178 Israeli homicides per year x 12 years = 2,136 Israeli homicides in the 12 year period of 2004-2016, as compared to 32 Israeli deaths from Gaza rockets and mortars in the same period, 32 Israeli deaths for which Apartheid Israel exacted a deadly revenge of 3,901 Palestinians killed, 17,300 wounded , 500,000 rendered homeless, about 50,000 Palestinian avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation, and 2.0 million Gazans, half of them children, significantly traumatized by indiscriminate Israeli army, navy and air force high explosive bombardment of the most densely populated zone in the world].
Richard Cohen (anti-racist Jewish American columnist): “The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake … the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Roger Cohen (anti-racist Jewish American journalist and author and columnist for The New York Times and International New York Times): “Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran “its sophistication and culture” than all the inflammatory rhetoric. That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Professor Marjorie Cohn, according to Wikipedia “is a professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California, and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. In 1978 Cohn received a job in the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. She also "participated in delegations to Cuba, China, Russia, and Yugoslavia" early in her career” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Cohn ).
Professor Marjorie Cohn on US and Israeli Palestine Genocide and the latest Israeli Gaza Massacre (2014): “ By sending vast amounts of military aid to Israel, members of the US Congress, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have aided and abetted the commission of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by Israeli officials and commanders in Gaza.An individual can be convicted of a war crime, genocide or a crime against humanity [PDF] in the International Criminal Court (ICC) if he or she "aids, abets or otherwise assists" in the commission or attempted commission of the crime, "including providing the means for its commission." There is growing evidence that Israeli leaders and commanders have committed the following war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as defined in the Rome Statute for the ICC. US military aid has aided, abetted and assisted the commission of these crimes by providing Israel with the military means to commit them. During Operation Protective Edge, Israeli forces again used the Dahiye Doctrine, which, according to the UN Human Rights Council [Goldstone] Report [PDF], involves "the application of disproportionate force and causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations"…
On July 23, 2014, the UN Human Rights Council established a commission of inquiry into Israeli violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law. The resolution also called on parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to convene and respond to the alleged violations. That convention requires parties to prosecute violators. Countries can bring foreign nationals to justice for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity under the well-established doctrine of universal jurisdiction. Genocide charges could also be brought under the Genocide Convention, to which both Israel and the United States are parties. That convention also punishes complicity in genocide; US leaders' provision of military aid would constitute complicity. Although the Israeli and US governments continue to maintain that Israel has only acted in self-defense against Hamas' terrorism, the weight of world opinion points in the opposite direction. There is overwhelming opposition to Israeli aggression in Gaza and calls for justice and accountability. Both Israeli and US leaders must be criminally prosecuted for committing and aiding and abetting these crimes.” [1].
[1]. Marjorie Cohn, “Israeli war crimes. Genocide & crimes against humanity”, MWC News, 8 August 2014: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/44454-israeli-war-crimes.html .
Clarence L. Coleman, Jr., (born on August 31, 1903 in Chicago, died La Quinta, California at the age of 93 on January 11, 1997). long time Chairman of the Board of the American Council for Judaism and a leader from the earliest days of the effort to promote a universal Judaism free of nationalism. He was a 1924 graduate of Princeton University and was the owner of Coleman Floor Coverings for 55 years. For more than 50 years he was a member of the board of directors of the Old Republic Insurance Company. His avocations included poetry and photography. He was on the board of directors of the La Quinta Country Club for more than 25 years and was the official photographer for the City of La Quinta for the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament for many years. He was dedicated to classical Reform Judaism which, in many ways, represented the most important commitment of his life. He was a founding member of Lakeside Congregation in Highland Park, Illinois and was an active member of the American Council for Judaism almost from its earliest years. He served as President before becoming Chairman of the Board. (see: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:iobPaLU54msJ:www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx%3Fid%3D95+%22thomas+kolsky%22&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au ).
Clarence Coleman on being an American a Jew and an anti-Zionist (1959): “"I am an American and a Jew. I am an anti-Zionist. While some find this a negative term, I personally find strong, positive connotations, having to do with my interpretation of the universal, prophetic Judaism which the Council seeks to articulate. I would recognize no ‘Yalu Rivers’ — no limitations on our activities directed to the removal of Zionism and its influences from the lives and the institutions of American Jews, except, as I am able to determine, the danger which may result for the totality of American Jewry because of any specific act or statement of the Council… I am against every force or influence at work in the lives of American Jews which tends to separate and segregate them, in areas other than their religious beliefs, from their fellow Americans; if this force or influence has its roots in Israel I am willing to pursue the generating power there or elsewhere. To whatever extent it can be clearly established that force or influence seeks to involve Jews in America in the politics of the Middle East, then I conceive it to be the duty of the Council to do with dignity and precision what can be done to rectify this situation, to disengage American Jews from a political involvement not required by their religious faith. I am for every program that will make better understood our meaning of Judaism and will advance the historic process of integration, in the secular and political sense, of American Jews. This is, broadly, the formula which I will attempt to apply to the direction of American Council for Judaism programs in the field of Public Affairs and the other areas of our concern." [1].
[1]. Clarence Coleman (1959) quoted in “The Legacy of Clarence L. Coleman, Jr. 1903–1997”, American Council For Judaism, Issues, Winter 1997: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:iobPaLU54msJ:www.acjna.org/acjna/articles_detail.aspx%3Fid%3D95+%22thomas+kolsky%22&cd=18&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au .
Professor John Docker and Dr Ned Curthoys are anti-racist Jewish Australian academics and have formed a Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism which issued the following statement (see: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2009/01/05/how-to-dismantle-zionism-in-a-few-easy-steps/ ). :
“JOHN DOCKER and NED CURTHOYS
Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism
Statement of Aims
1. In the Gandhian tradition of non-violence, the committee stands for the peaceful co-existence of Israeli Jews and Palestinians within a unified democratic state where everyone is a full citizen irrespective of religion or ethnicity.
2. The committee supports the view of Sir Isaac Isaacs, Jewish jurist and former Governor General of Australia in the 1940s, that the very idea of a Jewish state is absurd, unjust, and ultimately untenable, since it makes all non-Jewish citizens necessarily and inevitably second-class citizens.
3. In the Gandhian tradition of non-violence, we support the cultural and economic boycott of Israel.
4. The Jewish Right of Return is a weapon in the Zionist colonization and occupation of Palestinian lands. Accordingly, we urge that the world wide Jewish diaspora should renounce the Right of Return.
5. We urge support for UN Resolution 194 which declares the unconditional right of the Palestinian refugees expelled from Palestine in 1948 to return to their homes.
6. We observe that Zionist Israel is guilty of genocidal policies as defined in Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. By ‘physical destruction’ we mean that Zionist Israel transparently seeks to destroy Palestinian society and remove Palestinians from their ancestral lands in order to Judaize those same lands.
7. The world wide Zionist organisations are also guilty, in terms of the Genocide Convention, Article III (e), of “complicity in genocide”.”
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh (Palestinian scientist, human rights activist and researcher at Bethlehem University and Birzeit University): “Congressman Paul Findley published a book in the 1970s called "They Dare to Speak Out". He listed many examples of courageous individuals who speak truth to power with regard to US policy in the Middle East. Speaking out against Israeli occupation, oppression, and apartheid is not cost free but the reward of being able to live with one's conscience is priceless. This list is just a sampling of names of people we consider with honor for heir honest and truthful stand for peace with justice… [LIST COMMENCING] Avigail Abarbanel… [LIST CONCLUDING] Sowwan wa Sabr” (Mazin Qumsiyeh, “Honor List”, Qumsiywh: a human rights web: http://qumsiyeh.org/honorlist/ ).
Compilation by US poet, writer and activist Michael R. Burch of truth-telling, anti-racist Jews (and anti-racist non-Jews) critical of Zionism, Israeli Occupation, Israeli Apartheid and the Palestinian Genocide: “Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing… [numerous quotations from anti-racsit Jews]. Other Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians include renowned author Philip Roth, acclaimed poet Adrianne Rich, actor Ed Asner, actress Rosanne Barr, Sidney Hook, Jeff Halper, I. F. Stone, Paul Wellstone, Maxine Rodinson, Moshe Menuhin, Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Lilienthal, Roger Cohen, Professor Don Peretz, journalist Eric Rouleau, Harvard Professor Sara Roy, Professor Jennifer Loewenstein, former South African government mnister Ronnie Kasrils, Professor Saul Landau, Professor Zachery Lochman, Professor Joel Beinin, Professor Ian Lustick, Professor Edward Herman, writer Stephen Lendman, Anthony Loewenstein, Professor Steven Zunes, Stanley Heller, Danny Schechter, Lenni Brenner, Jeff Blankfort, author and journalist Alain Gresh, Professor Cheryl Rubenberg, Professor Michael Selzer, Professor David Fromkin, Howard Zinn, author Seymour M. Hersh, Bob Simon, Senior CBS Foreign Correspondent Barry Lando, Democracy Now radio host Amy Goodman, media critic Norman Solomon, writer Bennett Muraskin, Professor Lawrence Davidson, Jerome M. Segal, Professor Mark Levine, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rabbi Brant Rosen, Jewish Voice for Peace activist Sydney Levy, Mark Braverman, author Phylis Bennis, journalist and editor David Finkel, Professor Mark Ellis, Joel Fischer, Professor Noel Ignatiev, Professor Bill Robinson, Allan C. Brownfeld editor of the American Council for Judaism Issues magazine, New York University Professor Bertrell Ollman, Dr. Gideon Polya, activist and writer Ralph Schoenman, writer Mike Marquisee, Swedish activists Snorre Lindquist and Lasse Wilhelmson, New York Times journalist Anthony Lewis, journalist Robert Scheer, journalist and blogger Philip Weiss, journalist Adam Horowitz, blogger Richard Silverstein, activist and writer Tim Wise, Professor Eric Alterman, Tsela Barr, Judith Laitman, Haley Michaels Pollack, Michelle Goldberg, activist and writer Adrienne Weller, Dan Leiberman editor of Alternative Insight, Dr. Marc Sapir, Hannah Mermelstein, Anna Baltzser, Professor Sharon Weill, Professor Randall Kuhn, author Ben Ehrenreich, Dr. Norton Mezvinsky, Dr. Joel Kovel and many other leading Jewish activists, intellectuals and religious figures.
Jewish and Israeli Peace and Humanitarian Organizations that have Opposed Israel's Racism, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing
Breaking the Silence (Israeli soldiers tell the truth about the Occupation)
Rabbis for Human Rights
Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions
B'Tselem
Jewish Voice for Peace
American Jews for a Just Peace
Gush Shalom
Jews Against the Occupation
and many others ... "
(Michael R. Burch, “Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, The Hyper Texts: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Howard Cooper is a rabbi and a psychotherapist, a Rabbinic graduate of the Leo Baeck College in London, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. His essay, “Living in Error”, appeared in a recent book, “A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity” (see: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248 and http://howardcoopersblog.blogspot.com/ ).
Rabbi Howard Cooper on “the State of Israel’s policies” that are in conflict with “trying to create, in the nitty gritty of everyday life, fairness, justice, and a society which is rooted in a particular kind of morality” (2009) : “I'm pro-Israel, and pro-Palestine. And that means that I want there to be, - I fervently wish that there could be - a way for Israel to help the Palestinian people have their own autonomy, identity and state, and that seems to me to be the historic issue which Israel has been grappling with and continues to grapple with, and needs to grapple with, in order for there to be peace… One of the central texts which comes thirty-six times in the Bible, is that you should not ill-treat or oppress a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt and there the memory, the collective mythic memory of the people - Egypt, oppression, slavery - is linked to morality. You shouldn't oppress now, in the present, anybody, because you carry this historical memory of what it's like to be oppressed. And that linking of memory with morality is absolutely central to the Judaic vision… [Deuteronomy, Chapter 16, Verse 20, as a biblical source for understanding the Judaic tradition of justice] The first half of the verse runs, 'Justice, justice, you shall pursue'. Well that seems like a kind of a generic and open statement. But the end of the verse goes on, 'that you may live', so that's a kind of existential, human consequence of pursuing justice, that it actually enlivens you and makes you thrive, you in a kind of individual and collective sense, so in that sense it's a universalistic statement. And then the verse goes on, 'that you may live and you may inherit the land which the eternal, your God, is giving you'. So inheritance of the land is linked to pursuit of justice… If you're going to offer, as I sometimes do, a critique of the State of Israel's policies in relation to a variety of things, which might be how it treats its own citizens, as well as how it treats Palestinians. If you're going to offer a critique from a religious perspective, then the prophets are the people who can root your critique not just in liberal humanism, but in a different mode of thinking about these questions. And as a Rabbi I try to bring to my thinking about contemporary issues this ancient vision, and the prophets are central to that. This isn't just an idiosyncratic thing. I mean, anyone who reads the prophetic texts, can see that they have a huge emphasis on trying to create, in the nitty gritty of everyday life, fairness, justice, and a society which is rooted in a particular kind of morality.” [1].
[1]. Howard Cooper interviewed by Gary Bryson in “Voices of Dissent” , ABC Radio National, “Encounter”, 22 March 2009: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248
Eva Cox AO (born 21 February 1938) is an Austrian-born Australian writer, feminist, sociologist, social commentator, social justice activist and prominent member of the Women's Electoral Lobby. She has lectured since 1994 at the University of Technology, Sydney, as Program Director, Social Inquiry (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Cox ).
In March 2010 Eva Cox and a large number of other decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal sdawn of history. According to outstandng Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Dr Ned Curthoys is an anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish Australian scholar who is a Research Fellow in the Research School of Humanities & the Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences. According to the ANU website: “Ned Curthoys completed his PhD in the English Department at the University of Sydney in 2002. His doctorate focused on the dissemination of the humanist tradition of classical rhetoric into twentieth century literary theory, philosophy, and political theory. Post-PhD he has researched and published on the political theorist Hannah Arendt’s cross-cutting interests in literary narrative and biography. More recently he has published on various aspects of the German Jewish experience from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, returned to a long standing interest in Albert Camus and the Algerian war, and entered debates about the cross-cultural validity of secularism” (see: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/people/profile_system/public.php?id=123 ). Ned Curthoys, according to the University of WA (2014): “joined the English and Cultural Studies program at The University of Western Australia in January 2014. He is the author of The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation (Berghahn Books, 2013) and has contributed work on Arendt to journals such as Theory and Event, New Formations, Comparative Literature Studies, and Intellectual History Review. His current research project investigates the banality of evil as a spur to representing perpetrators and their cultural matrix in contemporary literature and film (see: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/curthoys ).
In March 2010, Professor Dennis Altman and a large number of other decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history. According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
John Docker and Ned Curthoys on the Israeli Palestinian Genocide (2010): We are part of an increasing number of people around the world of Jewish descent who are sickened by the coldly calculated massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza and who utterly repudiate Israel's claim that it acts in the name of Jews the world over.
Like Antony Loewenstein, co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, we deplore the 'myth of Israel' as perpetual victim and rational peace seeker, and its stranglehold over media reportage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The massacre in Gaza cries out not only for immediate condemnation but for historical explanation. As scholars working in the fields of genocide studies and research into the long history of European colonization, it seems clear to us that Israel - as in the history of white Australia since 1788 - is a genocidal settler colonial society that since its founding in 1948 continually seeks to destroy the foundations of life of the indigenous Palestinians, their health, dignity, livelihood, personal security, access to education, and political organisation, so that the Palestinians can be replaced by colonizing Zionist settlers.
Recent genocide scholarship has highlighted how much the original definition of genocide (by Raphael Lemkin in chapter nine of his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) linked genocide and colonization as a two stage process of destruction of the home society (not necessarily by physical annihilation qua Nazism) and replacement by the incoming colonizers.
Such has been the continuing historical pattern of Israel in relation to the indigenous people of the land. In 1948 the Zionist forces violently drove out over 700,000 Palestinians by deploying 'admonitory massacres', as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has evoked in horrific detail in his recent The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006)…
The December 2008 Gaza massacre by Zionist Israel poses an intense dilemma for Israel's organized Jewish supporters and much of the Jewish diaspora, who have for decades cooperated with and been complicit in the ongoing, incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
Israel is guilty under article II, part C of the United Nations Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'.
By physical destruction we do not mean physical annihilation but what the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling described as the 'politicide' of the Palestinians, the destruction of their political leadership and civic institutions and the attempt to prevent them reproducing themselves through the generations as a sovereign people”. [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
[2]. John Docker and Ned Curthoys, “The Gaza Massacre”, The Drum, ABC, 1 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-09/37828 .
Dr Ned Curthoys is an anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish Australian scholar who is a Research Fellow in the Research School of Humanities & the Arts, College of Arts and Social Sciences. According to the ANU website: “Ned Curthoys completed his PhD in the English Department at the University of Sydney in 2002. His doctorate focused on the dissemination of the humanist tradition of classical rhetoric into twentieth century literary theory, philosophy, and political theory. Post-PhD he has researched and published on the political theorist Hannah Arendt’s cross-cutting interests in literary narrative and biography. More recently he has published on various aspects of the German Jewish experience from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, returned to a long standing interest in Albert Camus and the Algerian war, and entered debates about the cross-cultural validity of secularism” (see: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/people/profile_system/public.php?id=123 ). Ned Curthoys, according to the University of WA (2014): “joined the English and Cultural Studies program at The University of Western Australia in January 2014. He is the author of The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation (Berghahn Books, 2013) and has contributed work on Arendt to journals such as Theory and Event, New Formations, Comparative Literature Studies, and Intellectual History Review. His current research project investigates the banality of evil as a spur to representing perpetrators and their cultural matrix in contemporary literature and film (see: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/curthoys ).
In March 2010, Professor Dennis Altman and a large number of other decent, anti-racist Australian Jews signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli "law of return" that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the "right" to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history. According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein "Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others" (see:
).
The petition is reproduced below.
"Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews
March 2010
We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.
Signed:
Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University
Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor
Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University
Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University
Sara Dowse – writer
GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide
Susan Varga – writer
Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question
Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney
Professor John Docker – Sydney University
Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor
Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales
Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic
Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong
Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University
Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University
Dr. Tamas Pataki
Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch
Alice Beauchamp
Toni Beauchamp
Wendy Crew
Bronwyn Dahlstrom
Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland
Marshall Harris
David Hermolin
Sylvie Leber
Jeffrey Loewenstein
Stefan Moore
Martin Munz
Vivienne Porzsolt
Joe Rich
Margot Salom
Rene Tsukasov
Nic Witton." [1].
John Docker and Ned Curthoys on the Israeli Palestinian Genocide (2010): We are part of an increasing number of people around the world of Jewish descent who are sickened by the coldly calculated massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza and who utterly repudiate Israel's claim that it acts in the name of Jews the world over.
Like Antony Loewenstein, co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, we deplore the 'myth of Israel' as perpetual victim and rational peace seeker, and its stranglehold over media reportage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The massacre in Gaza cries out not only for immediate condemnation but for historical explanation. As scholars working in the fields of genocide studies and research into the long history of European colonization, it seems clear to us that Israel - as in the history of white Australia since 1788 - is a genocidal settler colonial society that since its founding in 1948 continually seeks to destroy the foundations of life of the indigenous Palestinians, their health, dignity, livelihood, personal security, access to education, and political organisation, so that the Palestinians can be replaced by colonizing Zionist settlers.
Recent genocide scholarship has highlighted how much the original definition of genocide (by Raphael Lemkin in chapter nine of his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) linked genocide and colonization as a two stage process of destruction of the home society (not necessarily by physical annihilation qua Nazism) and replacement by the incoming colonizers.
Such has been the continuing historical pattern of Israel in relation to the indigenous people of the land. In 1948 the Zionist forces violently drove out over 700,000 Palestinians by deploying 'admonitory massacres', as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has evoked in horrific detail in his recent The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006)…
The December 2008 Gaza massacre by Zionist Israel poses an intense dilemma for Israel's organized Jewish supporters and much of the Jewish diaspora, who have for decades cooperated with and been complicit in the ongoing, incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
Israel is guilty under article II, part C of the United Nations Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'.
By physical destruction we do not mean physical annihilation but what the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling described as the 'politicide' of the Palestinians, the destruction of their political leadership and civic institutions and the attempt to prevent them reproducing themselves through the generations as a sovereign people”. [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
[2]. John Docker and Ned Curthoys, “The Gaza Massacre”, The Drum, ABC, 1 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-09/37828 .
By his own testimony, “Lawrence Davidson was born in 1945 in Philadelphia PA. He grew up in Elizabeth NJ in a secular Jewish household. In 1963 he matriculated at Rutgers University for his BA. At Rutgers, Davidson developed a left leaning activist orientation to the problems facing the US in the 1960s. In 1967 he moved on to Georgetown University for his MA.
At Georgetown University he studied modern European intellectual history under the Palestinian ex-patriot Professor Hisham Sharabi. Sharabi and Davidson subsequently became close friends and one can date his interest in Palestinian, as well as Jewish and Zionist, issues from this time. His years at Georgetown (1968-1970) coincided with the height of the Vietnam war and Davidson became one of the founding members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Georgetown. Davidson managed to both strongly agitate against the Vietnam war and complete his MA during these years.
In 1970, with the breakup of the SDS, Davidson left the United States for Canada. This was a voluntary exile. He spent the next six years in Canada and obtained his PhD (1976), also in modern European Intellectual history, at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. At that point he returned to the United States.
The mid 1970s was a bad time for the academic job market in history. Davidson spent several years as an adjunct instructor at various colleges and universities, as well as working for a time as a middle manager at Alexian Brothers Hospital, a Catholic hospital in St. Louis. Subsequently he was contracted to write the history of Alexian Brothers’ oldest hospital. This led to his first book length work, The Alexian Brothers of Chicago (1990). During this period he also published numerous articles in a number of different areas including medical history, history of education, US foreign policy and, increasingly, articles having to do with Zionism and the Palestinian question. Many of these latter pieces appear in the early issues of the Journal of Palestine Studies edited by Professor Sharabi.
In 1989 Davidson joined the faculty of history at West Chester University as a tenure track professor. He remained at this institution for 27 years and maintained an increasingly productive publishing record. He retired from WCU in May of 2013” (see: http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/biography ). Dr. Davidson has done extensive research and published in the areas of American perceptions of the Middle East, and Islamic Fundamentalism. His two latest publications are “Islamic Fundamentalism” (Greenwood Press, 1998) and “America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood” (University Press of Florida, 2001). He has published thirteen articles on various aspects of American perceptions of the Middle East. Dr. Davidson holds a BA from Rutgers, an MA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Alberta (see: http://mwcnews.net/component/comprofiler/userprofile/ldavidson1945.html ).
Dr Lawrence Davidson on the 8th anniversary of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement (2012): “The latest success in this effort came just recently, when two of the largest supermarket chains in the Netherlands announced they would no longer sell Israeli merchandise manufactured or grown in the Occupied Territories (OT). Indeed, so successful has BDS been that the Israeli government has established an official task force to counteract it. The European Union Makes a Move. Another recent event may be even more significant, because it suggests the potential for expanding BDS from the private to the public sphere. This was signaled when the European Union (EU) issued new rules for implementing certain categories of funding agreements with Israel. Funding of grants, prizes, loans and other financial cooperative ventures will now exclude Israeli institutions located in or doing business with the OT. I want to emphasize the notion of “potential” because the EU move is not a boycott action as such. It is a signal to Israel that the EU will not recognize Israel’s claim to any part of the Occupied Territories without a peace settlement, and therefore this move serves as a point of pressure on the Israeli government to give up its hubris and negotiate with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). By the way, the PNA as presently constituted is not a representative body and therefore has no legal authority to negotiate anything. However, the EU (along with the Israelis and the United States) persistently ignores this fact… Again, the BDS movement is only 8 years old. We can compare this to the more than 30 years it took the boycott of South Africa to end apartheid. So, comparatively, BDS is only at the beginning of its trek. Its fast start and ongoing achievements should bring hope and pride to those involved in the movement. They should also raise some serious second thoughts in the minds of those Israelis who think Netanyahu and his government of ideologues can prevent their country’s increasing isolation.” [1].
[1]. Dr Lawrence Davidson, “ The Boycott of Israel 8 years in”, MWC News, 28 July 2013: http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/29109-boycott-of-israel.html .
Elias Davidsson is a Palestine-born, anti-racist, humanitarian, anti-Zionist Jewish writer whose parents were refugees from Nazi Germany. He is the director of PRICE, Reykjavik, Iceland (see: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DAV401A.html ).
Elias Davidsson on Zionism, Jewish power and Judaism: “The question whether condemnation of Israeli policies should be framed as condemnation of Zionist or of Jewish wrongdoing has bedevilled a debate within progressive circles. Some people consider that attributing the crimes of the State of Israel to "Jews" is factually inaccurate and counter-productive while others perceive that Israeli policies are founded on Jewish principles and on Jewish solidarity. In trying to untangle this complex question, I suggest that one can discern (within the framework of rejection of Zionism) three distinct perspectives (approaches) to the question Jews or Zionists…
ZIONISM AS A POLITICAL REPRESSIVE MOVEMENT. This approach informs an agenda focussed on dismantling the "Jewish" state in Palestine, because it is illegal, racist, etc. and replacing it by a secular, democratic state. The approach is limited to the political dimensions of Zionism and can, but not necessarily so, be coupled with an anti-imperialist perspective… This first approach is shared by most anti-Zionists who identify as Jews, and wish to maintain the distinction between Jews and Zionists. Implied in this approach is disinterest in Jewish religion or, alternatively, a benign, humanist, interpretation of Jewish religion.”
ZIONISM AS THE REFLECTION OF JEWISH POWER. This approach, often wrongly equated with anti-Semitism, is that Jews (or more accurately prominent/rich Jews and/or Jewish organisations) possess sufficient power to affect the policies of (non-Jewish) governments… It cannot be denied that Jews (defined herein as individuals known for their participation in Jewish community life or identifying positively as Jews), who comprise 0.2 percent of the world's population, possess collectively vastly more financial and political power, than their numbers would suggest.
ZIONISM AS AN OUTGROWTH OF THE JEWISH RELIGION. This approach that seeks to understand both Zionism and Jewish Power as a modern verions, as it were, of Jewish religion, i.e. a secular, worldly, implementation of the more or less hidden Talmudic concepts such as Jewish chosenness and discriminatory attitudes to gentiles… Whether Zionism and Jewish Power in political life can be related to the Talmud is a legitimate subject of inquiry for anyone interested in religion and politics. For the person who contends that one of the main stumbling-blocks to a just peace in Palestine is Jewish religion, it appears logical to focus on the relation of Jewish religion with its secular cousins expressed in political and legal terms. Such inquiry is legitimate and may be beneficial. The late Professor Israel Shahak and other Israeli authors, including former Israel's intelligence chief Yehoshafat Harkabi, contributed valuable insight into this theme.” [1].
[1]. Elias Davidsson, “Jews or Zionists? Three approaches”, Aldeilis.net, 30 June 2005: http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=548&Itemid=210 .
Brandon Davis is a Jewish American sophomore at Princeton University from Westport, Connecticut, USA (see: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/10/06/26459/ ).
Brandon Davis on the “politicization of Judaism”(2010): “I agree that it would be wrong to draw conclusions about Israelis or Jews in general because of some Israeli policies and military actions — just as it would be wrong to judge any community by the actions of its worst representatives. But how do we deal with Judaism when almost all American Jewish organizations unconditionally support Israeli policies?... And just as it is fair to criticize Israeli policies, it is fair to criticize its apologists — groups that claim to represent the entire American Jewish community. American Jews have traditionally been at the forefront of progressive movements. But in recent years, American Jewish institutions have trended toward the ugly side of Zionism, defending — or at least apologizing for — the Israeli hard right in its continuation of the occupation of the West Bank and repression of Palestinian identity. The undeniable injustices of the Israeli government and military warrant criticism; silence in the face of these injustices warrants criticism as well. It is time for American Jews to stand up against oppression, violence and religious fundamentalism. The tribalism that has persuaded the Jewish people to categorically stand up for Israel for so many years is foolish and outdated. The occupation of the West Bank is wrong. The blockade of Gaza is wrong. The displacement of Palestinian villages is wrong. The continued construction of settlements is wrong. And American Jews have enabled all of it. It’s about time a Jew stood up and said so. ” [1].
[1]. Brandon Davis, “The politicization of Judaism”, The Daily Princetonian, 6 October 2010: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/10/06/26459/ .
Dr Uri Davis is a philosophical anthropologist; honorary research fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham and at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.
He is the author of "Apartheid Israel: Possibilities For the Struggle Within" ( Zed Books). Uriel (Uri) Davis (born 1943 in Jerusalem, Palestine) is an academic and a civil rights activist in Israel, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Middle East. He has served as Vice-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and as lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford, describes himself as "a Palestinian Hebrew national of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, registered as Muslim and a citizen of an apartheid state - the State of Israel”, has been a member of Fatah since 1984, and was elected to the Revolutionary Council for the Palestinian party in 2009 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Davis
and http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/israels-apartheid/3451430 ).
According to an Australian ABC summary, "Uri Davis believes it's the truth that the state of Israel is possibly the last surviving apartheid state amongst the member states of the United Nations. He advocates international sanctions against the government of Israel, with the aim of dismantling the state's apartheid structures as a state for Jews only, and to assist the establishment of a democratic state of Palestine." . [1].
Uri Davis on Israeli Apartheid (2004): “The Geneva Accords fail to secure the removal of apartheid legislation from the Israeli statute books. Besides the Absentees Property Law mentioned earlier, key laws in this context are the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency Status Law of 1952 and the Jewish National Fund Law of 1953. The Accords also fail to address the circumstances of the one million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (20 per cent of the total population of the pre-1967 Israel). While all Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel suffer the effects of Israeli apartheid legislation, some two hundred thousand among them suffer additional disabilities by virtue of being internally displaced persons. They are citizens of the State of Israel, yet, insofar as their pre-1948 property rights are con-cerned, their status is identical to that of the 1948 Palestine refugees. These fundamental omissions are likely to bring about the demise of the Geneva Accords, in a similar way as the Oslo Accords collapsed because a “peace process” and “interim arrangements” were used to avoid confronting the issues at the core of the Palestine question.” [2].
Uri Davis on the “political-Zionist apartheid JNF" and the Palestinian Genocide (2011): “On 30 March, Palestinians will celebrate the 35th anniversary of Land Day, commemorating the death of six Palestinian Arabs (five of whom were citizens of Israel) who actively resisted the decision of the Israeli Government in the 1970s to intensify the confiscation of Arab lands for settlements designated for “Jews” only. Also in March, the 81st issue of PYALARA’s Youth Times was printed, featuring Raniya Atallah’s splendid investigative report on the development of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi, nine kilometers north of Ramallah with a panoramic view of the Mediterranean, project of national importance and the symbol of the Palestinian right to build. On 8 February 2011, I published the summary of my research on Rawabi, and its acceptance of a large donation of pine trees from the Zionist charity the Jewish National Fund (JNF)… As I explained in my earlier article, the JNF is an organization largely behind the “greenwashing” of the expulsion of Palestinians from their villages by planting trees (mainly conifers), over the lands of many of the some 500 Palestinian Arab villages ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in the 1948-49 war (the Palestinian Nakba) as well as by developing recreational parks named after various local and international dignitaries and after various member states of the United Nations. The JNF also developed Canada Park, this time over the ruins of and over the lands of the three Latrun villages of ‘Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in the 1967 war. The mission of the political-Zionist apartheid JNF is the “redemption” of lands in “Eretz Israel,” including Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and beyond for Jewish settlement. In accepting the donation of the JNF 3,000 saplings, Rawabi becomes complicit in the actions of the organization, particularly as cases go forward in the UK and Canada, seeking to have their charitable status revoked.” [3].
[1]. Dr Uri Davis, interviewed by Phillip Adams,“Israel’s Apartheid”, :Late Night Live, : http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/israels-apartheid/3451430 .
[2]. Uri Davis, “Apartheid Israel: a critical reading gof the Geneva Accords”, Peace News, March-May 2004: http://peacenews.info/node/3978/apartheid-israel-critical-reading-geneva-accords .
{3]. Uri Davis, “Rawabi remains settler-colonial sub-contractor”, BDS, 31 March 2011: http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/davis-rawabi-5931 .
[4]. Uri Davis, “Ten theses on the marketing of Israeli Apartheid as “The only democracy in the MiddleEast,” the question of support for the boycott of Israeli industrial, academic, cultural and scientific institutions and international U.N. sanctions against the rogue government of the state of Israel”: http://www.uridavis-official-website.info/ .
Dr Uri Davis (Jewish Palestinian academic, writer and human rights activist) on Zionism, 93% ethnic cleansing of Israel, and Apartheid Israel (2005): “Zionism is not a swear word, Zionism is not a conspiracy. When I refer to myself as an anti-Zionist, I do so with reference to the mainstream. The mainstream and the dominant element in Zionist history is political Zionism. But there have been other schools, and some of these schools within the Zionist environment have been bitter opponents of the mainstream of political Zionism. I would refer in this connection for instance, to the school known as spiritual Zionism, founded and led by a very distinguished Jewish intellectual known as Ahad Ha'am , Asher Ginsburg. And the vision is significant, whereas the political Zionist school aimed to establish a sovereign State, and attempt to secure in that territory both in law and in practice, a demographic majority of ethnic Jews. Spiritual Zionism were very vehement and strongly opposed to that. Ahad Ha'am argued very much in favour of establishing in Jerusalem, a cultural centre for the Jewish people, and was dead opposed to the establishment of a Jewish State. He had a series of seminal articles published in the wake of his visit to Palestine, and these should be re-read again today. They were prophetic, he explained, that the banner or the slogan of "A Land without the People, for a People without the Land" is wholly false, that the country is populated, that attempting to establish a State there would result in a protracted and unjustified conflict he was against, then, to our project… You're quite right, you don't see petty apartheid in Israel. But the core is very similar, both in South Africa and in Israel; the core is a conflict between a settler-colonial State and the indigenous population, and these conflicts are anchored in the quest of the settler State to appropriate control of the land and the sub-soil, and deny the indigenous peoples their rights in the land and the sub-soil. The consequence of this project in South Africa resulted in some 87% of the territory reserved in law for white settlement cultivation and development. In Israel it's worse. At the core, namely access to land, housing and sub-soil, 93% of the territory of the State of Israel, 93% is reserved in law exclusively for Jewish settlement, cultivation and development” (Uri Davis in interview, “Apartheid Israel?”, ABC Radio National, The Religion Report, 8 June 2005: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/religionreport/apartheid-israel/3442902#transcript ).
Jacques Derrida (anti-racist Jewish French philosopher best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction): “I wish to state right away my solidarity with all those, in this land, who advocate an end to violence, condemn the crimes of terrorism and of the military and police repression, and advocate the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories as well as the recognition of the Palestinians’ right to choose their own representatives to negotiations, now more indispensable than ever… [the Israeli State’s] existence, it goes without saying, must henceforth be recognised by all”(“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ; Joseph Massad, “Sartre, European intellectuals and Zionism”, Electronic Intifada, 31 January 2003: https://electronicintifada.net/content/sartre-european-intellectuals-and-zionism/4384.
John Docker is an Honorary Professor in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. In 2002, he was part of a group calling for a boycott of visiting Israeli academics. According to the University of Sydney he “researches and writes in the fields of genocide and massacre studies, cultural theory, the Enlightenment, monotheism and polytheism, intellectual history, historiography, diaspora, ethnic and cultural identity, and the history of Zionism and Israel-Palestine” (see: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/history/staff/profiles/docker.shtml and http://hist-phil.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/peter-slezak-160.html and http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248 ).
John Docker on the anger of anti-racist and anti-apartheid Jews towards the genocidal crimes of racist Zionist-run Israel (2009): “Many a morning I've woken up - say during the 2002 boycott call, or more recently - feeling palpitations and fear, even paranoia about, will I be physically attacked? Gaza has changed everything, it's changed the world utterly. International civil society and including Jewish groups - a surprise for me - in New York, across the US, certainly in Britain, ex-South African Jews who fought against apartheid who now live in Britain, completely appalled and enraged against Zionist Israel. I think increasingly Jews around the world, despite the Zionist organisations who wish to exercise an almost totalitarian control over the Jewish community, so they can have no ideas and no thoughts except what the Jewish leaders in Australia say they should have, are beginning to think that Zionism in Israel is a terrible mistake… But the other monstrosity involved in this, is that in 1948 according to a deliberate military plan worked out by the highest levels of the Zionist leadership - they say with David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, and an inner circle called 'The Consultancy'- this inner group worked out 'Plan Dalet' which was based on detailed files of every village and town, neighbourhood, over many years, made in mandated Palestine, and carried into effect. So that the majority indigenous population in the cities, in towns, in villages, all across Palestine, were driven out, 800,000 refugees were made and they were often massacred, the scores of massacres that have been detailed by Ilan Pappe, in his recent book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Or they were making forced marches in extremely hot conditions, old people, young people, children. Or they were pushed into the sea, and many were drowned. The horror of 1948 which has been concealed by Zionism and the rest of the world, or the rest of the world governments, Western governments, have accepted this. The horror of 1948 as supposedly the moment of independence of Israel, is now turning out to be the moment when the true character of Zionism in Israel was revealed... Well what one would hope is that it becomes a society like Australia, a society which is secular, democratic, composed of many different groups, but they're all brought together in the one polity, and everyone's a citizen, whatever their religion, or their ethnicity.” [1].
Professor John Docker as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [2].
John Docker and Ned Curthoys on the Israeli Palestinian Genocide (2010): We are part of an increasing number of people around the world of Jewish descent who are sickened by the coldly calculated massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza and who utterly repudiate Israel's claim that it acts in the name of Jews the world over.
Like Antony Loewenstein, co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, we deplore the 'myth of Israel' as perpetual victim and rational peace seeker, and its stranglehold over media reportage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The massacre in Gaza cries out not only for immediate condemnation but for historical explanation. As scholars working in the fields of genocide studies and research into the long history of European colonization, it seems clear to us that Israel - as in the history of white Australia since 1788 - is a genocidal settler colonial society that since its founding in 1948 continually seeks to destroy the foundations of life of the indigenous Palestinians, their health, dignity, livelihood, personal security, access to education, and political organisation, so that the Palestinians can be replaced by colonizing Zionist settlers.
Recent genocide scholarship has highlighted how much the original definition of genocide (by Raphael Lemkin in chapter nine of his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) linked genocide and colonization as a two stage process of destruction of the home society (not necessarily by physical annihilation qua Nazism) and replacement by the incoming colonizers.
Such has been the continuing historical pattern of Israel in relation to the indigenous people of the land. In 1948 the Zionist forces violently drove out over 700,000 Palestinians by deploying 'admonitory massacres', as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has evoked in horrific detail in his recent The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006)…
The December 2008 Gaza massacre by Zionist Israel poses an intense dilemma for Israel's organized Jewish supporters and much of the Jewish diaspora, who have for decades cooperated with and been complicit in the ongoing, incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.
Israel is guilty under article II, part C of the United Nations Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'.
By physical destruction we do not mean physical annihilation but what the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling described as the 'politicide' of the Palestinians, the destruction of their political leadership and civic institutions and the attempt to prevent them reproducing themselves through the generations as a sovereign people”. [1].
[1]. Professor John Docker interviewed by Gary Bryson in “Voices of Dissent” , ABC Radio National, “Encounter”, 22 March 2009: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248 .
[2]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
[3]. John Docker and Ned Curthoys, “The Gaza Massacre”, The Drum, ABC, 1 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-09/37828 .
Sara Dowse is a novelist and journalist. She was born in the US into a Jewish family containing secular supporters of labour or left-wing Zionism. She emigrated to Australia in 1958 and has also lived in Israel. Since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, she has come to believe that a specifically Jewish state is “a terrible mistake”. She wrote “Sapphires”, a novel about three generations of Jewish women (see: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248 and http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/shocking-cynicism-of-a-poisoned-homeland/2009/01/07/1231004100045.html ) .
Sara Dowse on her belief “that a specifically Jewish state has been a terrible mistake” (2009): “It has taken me days to begin writing this, so horrified have I been by Israel's latest actions. My sense of justice, however - as a mother, a Jew, and above all as a human being - impels me to try. The massacre in Gaza has its roots in virulent European anti-Semitism and the 1917 Balfour declaration, when the British government promised Zionists that Jewish people would have a homeland in Palestine if Britain was victorious in World War I. The key word here is homeland, and it should be remembered that the promise was qualified by the condition that such a homeland would "not be to the detriment" of the Palestinians. The steady increase in Jewish immigration under the British mandate provoked riots and protests, but Palestinians were still in majority until, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Zionists unilaterally declared an Israeli state… Since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon I have undergone what for me, as a Jew, has been an agonising realignment of my feelings about Israel. I have come to believe that a specifically Jewish state has been a terrible mistake. A homeland is different from a state. There have been examples throughout history and there are in our own time polities with mixed ethnic populations and official sanction for their living in harmony together. Australia is one. I don't know how it will come about - I hope with as little bloodshed as possible - but I look forward to the distant day when the land becomes a multicultural country again, perhaps as a federation, perhaps in another form, but similar to what it was before it was destroyed with the poison of ethnic territorial nationalism.” [1].
Sara Dowse on the oppression of the Palestinians (2009): “I just felt if one more child is killed in the name of Judaism, or Israel, I can't take it, I really can't take it. And this is a visceral response, but I think a genuine one, and I think a lot of people are thinking that way. The road not taken is still there; there are a lot of people in Israel who are raising the same questions that I am. If you go back to some of the earlier streams of Zionism, the revisionists, these were the most militant Zionists, and this is the ideology that is uppermost today, they believe that the Jews were promised all of Canaan, all of Palestine. That is why the idea of the two-state solution is so difficult to achieve, because merely it's argued that many, many Israelis do not accept the idea that that Palestinians should have their own state, and if you look at Gaza and if you look at the West Bank, you can see that a viable state for the Palestinians is not in the offing… Of course Jewish people should live in the land which was once called Israel, once called Judea or once called Samaria, now called Palestine. But that doesn't mean that there has to be a Jewish state in that land, and to be honest, I never really thought this through very much until quite recently I think.” [2].
Sara Dowse, as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [3].
[1]. Sara Dowse, “Shocking cyncism of a poisoned homeland”, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 January 2009: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/shocking-cynicism-of-a-poisoned-homeland/2009/01/07/1231004100045.html .
[2]. Sara Dowse interviewed by Gary Bryson in “Voices of Dissent” , ABC Radio National, “Encounter”, 22 March 2009: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/voices-of-dissent/3135248 .
[3]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Marek Edelman (anti-racist Jewish Polish cardiologist and last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw uprising) in a 2002 letter of solidarity with Palestinian resistance leaders that was addressed to: “commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations - to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations… In 1943, we fought for the life of Jewish society in Warsaw. We fought solely for life, not for territory and not for national identity ... our weapons were never aimed at a defenseless civilian population. We did not kill women and children… to this day, a partisan struggle in cities has never succeeded anywhere in the world, but the armies we fought against also never won. This war also will not lead to any solution. Once again, blood will be spilled needlessly and people on both sides will lose their lives… we never gambled with our lives. We never sent our soldiers to a certain death; after all, you only live once. A man must not take another's life. It is time for everyone to understand that… [learn from Northern Ireland where] ardent enemies sat round the same table" (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ; Yair Sheleg, “Letter to “Palestinian Partisans” raises international storm”, Haaretz, 9 August 2002: http://www.haaretz.com/news/letter-to-palestinian-partisans-raises-international-storm-1.37387 ).
Ben Ehrenreich (anti-racist Jewish American writer): “The fate Buber foresaw is upon us: a nation that has lived in a state of war for decades, a quarter-million Arab citizens with second-class status and more than five million Palestinians deprived of the most basic political and human rights. If two decades ago comparisons to the South African apartheid system felt like hyperbole, they now feel charitable. The white South African regime, for all its crimes, never attacked the Bantustans with anything like the destructive power Israel visited on Gaza in December and January, when nearly1,300 Palestinians were killed, one-third of them children” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), outstanding German Jewish mathematician, winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics (for discovering the photoelectric effect) and most famous for his special theory of relativity and general theory of relativity. Initially pro-Zionist, Einstein was increasingly critical of the fascist and racist nature of Zionist extremists such as Menachem Begin (see: Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein )
Albert Einstein on racist Zionism, 1938: “Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rath-er see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain--especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state." [1].Einstein in a Letter with other scholars decrying Nazi-style Irgun Zionists to the New York Times, 1948: “TO THE EDITORS OF NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin's political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin's behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin's party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.
The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.
During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute.
The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.
Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a "Leader State" is the goal.
In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.
The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.
ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ,
HANNAH ARENDT,
ABRAHAM BRICK,
RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO,
ALBERT EINSTEIN,
HERMAN EISEN, M.D.,
HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D.,
H.H. HARRIS,
ZELIG S. HARRIS,
SIDNEY HOOK,
FRED KARUSH,
BRURIA KAUFMAN,
IRMA L. LINDHEIM,
NACHMAN MAISEL,
SEYMOUR MELMAN,
MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D.,
HARRY M. OSLINSKY,
SAMUEL PITLICK,
FRITZ ROHRLICH,
LOUIS P. ROCKER,
RUTH SAGIS,
ITZHAK SANKOWSKY,
I.J. SHOENBERG,
SAMUEL SHUMAN,
M. SINGER,
IRMA WOLFE,
STEFAN WOLFE.
New York, Dec. 2, 1948." [2].
Albert Einstein’s letter about the Deir Yassin Massacre (1948): “ April 10.1948
Mr. Shepard Rifkin
Exec. Director
American Friends of the Fighters
for the Freedom of Israel
149 Second Ave.
New York 3,N.Y.
Dear Sir:
When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.
I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.
Sincerely yours,
Albert Einstein.” [3].
[1]. Albert Einstein, “Our Debt to Zionism”, 1938, quoted by David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann (eds), “Einstein on politics: his private thoughts and public stands on nationalism, Zionism, war, peace, and the bomb”, Princeton University Press, 2007: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8359.html .
[2]. Letter by Albert Einstein and many other signatories to the New York Times, 4 December 1948, “New Palestine Party. Visit of Menachen Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed”,. a letter to The New York Times, published in the "Books" section (Page 12) of the New York Times, Saturday December 4, 1948: http://www.archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948 .
[3]. Albert Einstein’s letter about the Deir Yassin Massacre (1948) : http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html .
Albert Einstein (famed anti-racist Jewish German mathematician and Nobel Laureate):“The (Israeli) state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Albert Einstein (anti-racist Jewish German, outstanding mathematician and Nobel Laureate) : "The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst ... The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people… [Only cooperation with Arabs] can create a dignified and safe life… What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not smart enough to want it" (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm).
Hagai El-Ad (executive director of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem) (2021): “Israel is not a democracy that has a temporary occupation attached to it. It is one regime between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and we must look at the full picture and see it for what it is: apartheid” (Oliver Holmes, “Israel is a non-democratic apartheid regime, says rights group””, Guardian, 12 January 2021: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/12/israel-is-a-non-democratic-apartheid-regime-says-rights-group ).
Dr Daniel Ellsberg is an outstanding Jewish American hero in the fight against US state terrorism and nuclear terrorist madness. He became famous with his courageous publication of the secret Pentagon papers (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg ) .
Dr Daniel Ellsberg, statement on Mordechai Vanunu and Israeli nuclear terrorism, 2005: " The fact that Israel has a large and growing nuclear arsenal – larger than Britain's – has been recognized by the rest of the world ever since Mordechai Vanunu revealed it conclusively 19 years ago. For demolishing his country's policy of concealment, denial, and "ambiguity" of its status as a nuclear weapons state, Vanunu served 18 years in prison, including an unprecedented period of 11 and a half years of solitary confinement in a six-by-nine-foot cell… This very month, both Israel and the U.S. are making open threats of armed attacks as early as this summer on Iran's nuclear weapons potential. For Israel to confirm openly Vanunu's revelations at this particular time – dramatically abandoning forty years of obfuscation – would attract unfavorable attention to the fact that such threats or attacks against Iran are aimed not at achieving a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East but at prolonging, indefinitely, Israel's monopoly of nuclear weapons in the region. That is an unstated aim for both the U.S. and Israel, but a less than compelling justification for war. This may be a reason – but not a legitimate one – for returning Mordechai Vanunu to silence in solitary. What the world needs of this prophet of the nuclear era is not his silence but his freedom to speak and travel, to inspire others to follow his example of truth-telling in their own countries, above all here in the United States." [1].
Dr Daniel Ellsberg on US, Israeli and other nuclear terrorism, 2008: “ nuclear weapons were used as a threat against a non-nuclear opponent during the Gulf War.
By the same token, contrary to the belief of most Americans that US nuclear weapons have never been used in the fifty years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American Presidents have employed nuclear threats over a dozen times, generally in secret from the US public, in crises and limited wars in Indochina, East Asia, Berlin, Cuba and the Middle East. The Soviet Union, Israel, and Pakistan have used nuclear weapons in the same way.
In each of these cases, nuclear weapons were used in the exact sense in which a gun is used when it is pointed at someone’s head in a confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled. To get one’s way without having to pull the trigger is a major reason for acquiring the gun and, often, for brandishing it.” [2].
[1]. Daniel Ellsberg, “Free Mordechai Vanunu”, Anti-war.com, 23 March 2005: http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5306 .
[2]. Daniel Ellsberg, “Ending Nuclear terrorism: by America and others”, Chapter 8 of “At the nuclear precipice: catastrophe or trandofrmation?”, edited by Richard Falk and David Krieger, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008: http://www.amazon.com/At-Nuclear-Precipice-Catastrophe-Transformation/dp/023060904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249542861&sr=1-1 ; Daniel Ellsberg web-site: http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/ending-nuclear-terrorism-by-america-and-others .
Ben Elton (famous German Jewish-origin British writer, novelist, playwright, comedian and TV series writer) in his novel “Two Brothers” [non-Jewish adopted Otto and his Jewish brother Paulus; in Berlin 1935]: “Otto’s recent announcement that he had decided to become a Zionist had both amused and frustrated his brother .. Lots of Jews in Berlin had begun talking about trying to get to Palestine. The Nazis themselves even raised the idea as a possible way of dealing with their “problem”. “It’s our homeland , “ Otto continued defiantly,”that’s all I need to know about it. Next year in Jerusalem!” … Now, having picked up a few illegal pamphlets in Jewish coffee shops, Otto had suddenly begun using the language of Zionist politics. “Homeland!” Paulus protested. “Homeland? Two thousand years ago, Otts! Believe it or not, mate, things have moved on. Palestine is now the homeland of – who? Oh, let me see. Oh yes, I remember: the Palestinians. Get it? The Palestinians live in Palestine. There’s a clue in the names. And I don’t think they will take very kindly to a fifteen-year-old German Jew boy turning up and saying he owns the place.” “We’ll takr it back,” Otto said darkly. “We have no choice.” “Great!” Paulus snapped. “And when you do maybe you can ban all the Arabs from using the parks and swimming pools. ”(Ben Elton, “Two Brothers”, Black Swan, London, 2012, pages 303-304 ).
Hedy Epstein was born in 1924 in Freiburg, Germany. She was 14 when she escaped from Nazi persecution via the Kinderstransport to England. Since her 1948 arrival in the U.S., Epstein has been an advocate for peace and human rights. In 2001 she founded the St. Louis chapter of the Women in Black anti-war group that originated in Israel, and has actively advocated for Palestinian rights since visiting the West Bank in 2003. As the last decade came to a close, Epstein continued her advocacy by travelling with the women's peace advocacy group Code Pink to the Gaza Freedom March. The December 31 March was a planned nonviolent demonstration to protest Israel's blockade of Gaza, with 1,000 advocates from abroad joining Palestinians in a march to the Gaza-Israel border checkpoint (see: http://networkedblogs.com/p23546894 ).
Hedy Epstein, Holocaust survivor, explains why she became a Palestinian human rights campaigner (2010): “I was born in Germany, I'm Jewish -- after Hitler came to power, my parents realized very quickly that Germany was not a good place to raise a family. They were willing to go anywhere in the world, but one place they were not willing to go to was Palestine -- they were anti-Zionists. As a child I didn't quite understand this, but if my parents were anti-Zionist, I was anti-Zionist. I came to the U.S. in 1948, around the same time Israel became a state, about which I had mixed feelings. On the one hand it was a place for Holocaust survivors to go to, those who could not or did not want to return to their homes, but on the other, I considered my parents' ardent anti-Zionism. While I was new in the U.S., Israel and Palestine remained on the back burner of my interests. In 1982, I heard about the massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon -- I wanted to know who was responsible for this, what had happened between 1948 and 1982. As I learned more, I became increasingly disturbed by the policies of Israel and its military. Fast forward to 2003 -- I was in the West Bank for the first time, and have been there five times since then… I'm an inveterate optimist, so someday there will be peace, but a lot of things have to change before that happens. If the occupation were to stop overnight, it would make all the difference in the world. Israel is the fourth-largest military entity in the world. They have the newest equipment, and it's used on the Palestinians. Also, if the U.S. stopped funding Israel, that would be another way of bringing about peace. We have humongous problems in this country, people are unemployed, losing their homes, we could use that money instead of overseas in a destructive way.” [1].
[1]. Hedy Epstein, interviews by La Times, “Holocaust survivor explains why she became Palestinian rights campaigner”, The Palestinian Telegraph, 8 January 2010: http://networkedblogs.com/p23546894 .
Nicole Erlich is an anti-racist Jewish Australian psychologist, writer, human rights activist and peace activist and a signatory of the letter in which prominent Australian Jews rejected the Israeli Law of Return (see: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/03/03/prominent-australian-jews-including-peter-singer-reject-the-israeli-right-of-return/ ).
Nicole Erlich on finding intense awareness of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (2012) “I picked up the book “The Other Side of Israel” by Susan Nathan. The author, a British-born Jew and initially a passionate Zionist, made the highly unusual decision to move to the Israeli Arab village of Tamra to experience and document the lives of the Indigenous population … The book listed every atrocity of which I am now intensely aware, but that back then I could never have imagined … I share the sentiment of Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who has stated that, “Israelis will never be free unless Palestinians are also free.” It is time for a country that has been defined for almost the entirety of its existence by ethnic cleansing to find a new path.” [1, 2].
[1]. Nicole Erlich, “Once you see you cannot unsee” in “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists”, edited by Avigail Abarbanel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) (pp 19, 23).
[2]. Nicole Erlich quoted in Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Beyond Tribal Loyalties”. Stories of anti-racist Jews”, MWC News, 18 January 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/24184-gideonpolya-beyond-tribal-loyalties.html .
European Jews for a Just Peace is a federation of Jewish Peace groups working and campaigning in 10 European countries against the occupation of Palestine and for a durable peace solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (see: http://www.ejjp.org/ , http://www.ejjp.org/aboutejjp/mission-statement.html and Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Jews_for_a_Just_Peace ).
European Jews for a Just Peace, Mission Statement: “Our principles are formulated Amsterdam Declaration of 20 September 2002:
We, representatives of eighteen Jewish peace organisations from nine European countries, gathered together at the conference "Don't say you didn't know" in Amsterdam on the 19 and 20th of September 2002, call upon:
A) the Israeli government to change its current policy and implement the proposals in the following declaration and
B) all other governments, the United Nations and the European Union to put pressure on the Israeli government to implement the proposals in the following declaration:
We believe that the only way out of the current impasse is through an agreement based on the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state and the guarantee of a safe and secure Israel and Palestine. We condemn all violence against civilians in the conflict, no matter by whom it is carried out.
We call for:
1. an immediate end of the occupation of the occupied territories: West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem with recognition of the 4th June 1967 borders;
2. complete withdrawal of all Jewish settlements in all the occupied territories;
3. the recognition of the right of both states to have Jerusalem as their capital;
4. the recognition by Israel of its part in the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. Israel should recognise in principle the Palestinian right to return as a human right. The practical solution to the problem will come about by agreement between parties based on a just, fair and practical considerations. It will include compensation, the return to the territory of the State of Palestine or of Israel, without endangering Israel's existence. We call upon the international community, especially Europe, for political and financial support.” [1].
[1]. European Jews for a Just Peace, Mission Statement: http://www.ejjp.org/aboutejjp/mission-statement.html .
Professor Richard Falk is an outstanding Jewish American scholar: emeritus professor in international law at Princeton University, writer, the author or co-author of 20 books ) speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to2 UN positions on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (for detailed biography see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Falk ). In 2008 this eminent Jewish international law scholar was arrested, imprisoned and deported by Apartheid Israel when he attempted to fulfil his role as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Professor Richard Falk in “Slouching toward a Palestinian holocaust”: “There is little doubt that the Nazi Holocaust was as close to unconditional evil as has been revealed throughout the entire bloody history of the human species. Its massiveness, unconcealed genocidal intent, and reliance on the mentality and instruments of modernity give its enactment in the death camps of Europe a special status in our moral imagination … Against this background, it is especially painful for me, as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as ‘holocaust’ … Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty … But Gaza is morally far worse[ than Darfur], although mass death has not yet resulted. It is far worse because the international community is watching the ugly spectacle unfold while some of its most influential members actively encourage and assist Israel in its approach to Gaza. Not only the United States, but also the European Union, are complicit, as are such neighbors as Egypt and Jordan … Israel is currently stiffening the boycott on economic relations that has brought the people of Gaza to the brink of collective starvation. This set of policies, carried on for more than four decades, has imposed a sub-human existence on a people that have been repeatedly and systematically made the target of a variety of severe forms of collective punishment.” [1].
Professor Richard Falk and other outstanding writers: “The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.
That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land allotted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.
Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?
Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.
This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.
(Signed) Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Harold Pinter, Arundhati Roy. Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn.” [2].
Richard Falk report to the UN General Assembly (as UN Special Rapportuer on the Occupied Palestinians) on gross violation of Occupied Palestinians by Apartheid Israel (2010) “It is this general structure of apartheid that exists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that makes the allegation increasingly credible despite the differences between the specific characteristics of South African apartheid and that of the Occupied Palestinian Territories regime. There is a question of definition as to whether Jews and Palestinians are “racial groups” within the meaning of these legal instruments. Some salient apartheid characteristics will be listed, although owing to limitations of space it is not possible to provide detailed accounts of these features of the occupation. For details on the apartheid character of the Israeli occupation, there exists an expert study that is both reliable and convincing. 13 Among the salient apartheid features of the Israeli occupation are the following: preferential citizenship, visitation and residence laws and practices that prevent Palestinians who reside in the West Bank or Gaza from reclaiming their property or from acquiring Israeli citizenship, as contrasted to a Jewish right of return that entitles Jews anywhere in the world with no prior tie to Israel to visit, reside and become Israeli citizens; differential laws in the West Bank and East Jerusalem favouring Jewish settlers who are subject to Israeli civilian law and constitutional protection, as opposed to Palestinian residents, who are governed by military administration; dual and discriminatory arrangements for movement in the West Bank and to and from Jerusalem; discriminatory policies on land ownership, tenure and use; extensive burdening of Palestinian movement, including checkpoints applying differential limitations on Palestinians and on Israeli settlers, and onerous permit and identification requirements imposed only on Palestinians; punitive house demolitions, expulsions and restrictions on entry and exit from all three parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” [3].
Richard A. Falk (United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine, an investigator with the UN Human Rights Council and an eminent American professor emeritus of international law at 41-Nobel-laureate Princeton University) addressing the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass a resolution condemning settlement building in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem (2010): “The continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians is creating an intolerable situation in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan. This situation can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing” [4].
[1]. Richard Falk, “Slouching toward a Palestinian holocaust “, The Translational Foundation for Peace and Future research (TFF), 29 Jiune 2007: http://www.transnational.org/Area_MiddleEast/2007/Falk_PalestineGenocide.html .
[2]. Letter from Richard Falk with Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Arundhati Roy, Harold Pinter, Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn re Palestine, Peninsular Peace and Justice Centre, Palo Alto, Califoirnai, USA, 19 July 2006: http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060726115326120&query=zinn .
[3] Richard Falk, “Report of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”, UN General Assembly (2010) : http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/downloads/other_reports/report-of-the-special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-the-palestinian-territories-occupied-since-1967.pdf .
[4]. Richard Falk quoted in Mel Frykberg, “Legal expert warns of “ethnic cleansing” in Jerusalem”, Electronic Intifada, 24 March 2011: https://electronicintifada.net/content/legal-expert-warns-ethnic-cleansing-jerusalem/9281 .
Richard Falk (anti-racist Jewish American international law professor at 41-Nobel-Laureate Princeton University and the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories): “[Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories] a crime against humanity” … “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the world” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Richard Falk (professor emeritus of international law at 41-Nobel-Laureate Princeton University, former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the author of more than 50 books on war, human rights and international law). In a statement issued by the UN, “Gaza: Silence Is Not An Option”: “[Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories] “a crime against humanity.” Falk: “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the world” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Tim Fenton (Zelo Street) defending anti-racist Jewish Labour MP Andrew Feinstein, attacked for defending anti-racist former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (2019): “Andrew Feinstein knows what anti-Semitism is, and where it can lead. His mother was a Holocaust survivor. 39 members of her family were not. He has lived in Apartheid South Africa, and experienced anti-Semitism there. He is also a Labour supporter, and in particular a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. This has resulted in him attracting abuse. After the Telegraph’s increasingly wayward pundit Allison Pearson had referred to Corbyn as “An appalling anti-Semite Marxist”, he responded “I am Jewish. My mother was a Holocaust survivor who lost 39 members of her family in the camps. I have lectured at Auschwitz on genocide prevention. I experienced anti-Semitism in apartheid South Africa. I can state unequivocally that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite!”… It’s sad that Jews who conclude independently that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite find themselves under attack for their freely expressed political choice – and castigated for telling that their families were decimated at death camps like Auschwitz and Theresienstadt” [2].
[2]. Tim Fenton reproduced in “Andrew Feinstein, Jewish activist, attacked for supporting Corbyn”, Jewish Voice for Labour”, 30 June 2019: https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/andrew-feinstein-jewish-activist-attacked-for-supporting-corbyn/ .
Ray Filar (she is anti-racist Jewish British freelance journalist published in The Guardian and an editor at Open Democracy magazine, working on the Transformation section) (2016): “Zionist Jews simply do not comprehend that the only people who are in real danger of being made refugees are the Palestinians, that while Israelis stress the abstract right to exist, Palestinians are being killed in their thousands. Like other neoliberal states, Israeli government strategy deliberately plays on the population's existential fear: invoking terrorist attacks, rockets, and frightening brown men in headscarfs. This enables the occupation to entrench itself across land it is not entitled to.
All of this erases an important anti-Zionist Jewish tradition. While today a majority of observing Jews identify with the state of Israel, there is both a growing and visible minority of anti- and non-Zionist Jews, and a rich history of anti-Zionism within Judaism. Political movements like The Jewish Labour Bund and thinkers such as Abraham Serfaty, Emma Goldman and Leon Trotsky are often ignored or dismissed as “self-hating traitors”. In the UK today groups like Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewdas, Young Jewish Left and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist network are active voices against the occupation.
In practice Zionism is indistinguishable from the Israeli nationalism that sees the oppression of Palestinians like Ertefaa or Munib as necessary collateral for Jewish survival. Those who support Israel are buying into the idea that Palestinian lives are worth less than those of Jews. A cursory glance at prisoner exchange numbers is demonstrative: in 2011 IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was exchanged for 1027 Palestinians.
This month, hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated worldwide against the massacre in Gaza. Marching in London with the Jewish bloc has been a powerful experience. Under the banner “not in my name”, we show that Israel does not speak for all Jews” (Ray Filar, “Why I am an anti-Zionist Jew”, Open Democracy, 29 April 2016: https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/ray-filar/why-i-am-antizionist-jew ).
Professor Norman Finkelstein is an outstanding, world-famous Jewish American scholar and the author of numerous books, most notably “The Holocaust Industry”. He was punished for his humane and scholarly criticism of Israel human rights abuses by being terminated at Chicago’s Catholic De Paul University (2007). He was arrested, imprisoned, deported and forbidden to return by Apartheid Israel in 2008 (for biographical details see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein ).
Professor Norman Finkelstein, to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting disinvestment in Israel: “I strongly support this statement. Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories is a war crime. The wall Israel has been building in the Occupied Territories is designed to incorporate these illegal settlements. The final five-point itemization of your statement makes unambiguously clear that anyone who opposes such divestment supports war crimes.” [1].
[1]. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting divestment in Israel, “Endorsements“, 2009: http://www.hsjp.org/endorsements/ .
Norman Finkelstein: "I have to ask a simple question: which leader of another American ally has appointed a man who favors genocide and ethnic cleansing as the deputy speaker of the legislature? Which other democracy has legitimate political parties in the governing coalition calling for permanent occupation of a neighboring state – and deliberate social engineering to create a new demographic ethnic reality in that conquered land? Putin’s Russia has not sunk that low. And we are not merely talking about a hypothetical situation. The grotesque death toll from Gaza is a distillation of this mindset – revealing at best a chilling contempt for Arab life and at worst, with the shelling of schools and shelters, a policy of indiscriminate hatred and revenge. Yes, killing women and children in shelters is about as low as you can get in wartime. As the State Department, in a rare moment of public candor, noted, it is appalling and disgraceful. To see in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle. But I see evil in front of noses here – and evil that is gaining strength because of willful American blindness" (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Bella Freud (German-Jewish origin London-based fashion designer), co-signatory of an Open Letter re the 2014 Gaza Massacre (2014): “We demand that Britain will not buy or supply military equipment that has, or could be, used or tested as part of Israel's illegal occupation or as part of its collective punishment of the Palestinian people” (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, “MPs, actors, authors and musicians among 21,000 demanding arms embargo on Israel”, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 23 July 2014: https://www.palestinecampaign.org/mps-actors-authors-musicians-among-21000-demanding-arms-embargo-israel/ ).
Esther Freud (German-Jewish origin UK novelist), co-signatory of an Open Letter re the 2014 Gaza Massacre (2014): “We demand that Britain will not buy or supply military equipment that has, or could be, used or tested as part of Israel's illegal occupation or as part of its collective punishment of the Palestinian people” (Palestine Solidarity Campaign, “MPs, actors, authors and musicians among 21,000 demanding arms embargo on Israel”, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 23 July 2014: https://www.palestinecampaign.org/mps-actors-authors-musicians-among-21000-demanding-arms-embargo-israel/ ).
Sigmund Freud (famed anti-racist Jewish Austrian physician and founder of Freudian psychoanalysis):“I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust. I can raise no sympathy at all for the misdirected piety which transforms a piece of a Herodian wall into a national relic, thereby offending the feelings of the natives” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, ”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Sigmund Freud (anti-racist Jewish Austrian physician and founder of Freudian psychoanalysis): “I concede with sorrow that the baseless fanaticism of our people is in part to be blamed for the awakening of Arab distrust” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm).
Erich Fried (anti-racist Jewish Austrian writer, poet and activist) in his poem “Hear, O Israel!” (1967): “When we were the oppressed, I was one with you, but how can we remain one now that you have become the oppressor?... So hear, O Israel …
hear the whimpers of your victims echoing your ancient sufferings " (“Hear, O Israel1”, Hypertexts: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Erich%20Fried%20English%20Translations.htm ).
Erich Fromm (anti-racist Jewish German social psychologist): “The claim of the Jews to the Land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse” (David Wilson, “From Albert Einstein to Noam Chomsky: famous Jews who have opposed Israel”, Stop the War Coalition, 12 August 2014: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/1307-from-albert-einstein-to-noam-chomsky-famous-jews-who-have-opposed-israel ).
Erich Fromm (eminent anti-racist Jewish German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, democratic socialist, scholar and author) (1959): “It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated. But in general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the [European] Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. … I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs — not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine” (Jewish Newsletter [New York] (19 May 1959); quoted in Prophets in Babylon (1980) by Marion Woolfson, p. 13 ).
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (pen-name Ahad Ha'Am , Jewish Russian writer and believer in spiritual Zionism) (1891) on Zionist wrongs imposed on the Indigenous inhabitants of Palestine (1891): “We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated… If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily”.
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'Am) (1891): “[The Jewish settlers] treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamelessly for no sufficient reason, and even take pride in doing so. The Jews were slaves in the land of their Exile, and suddenly they found themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that ONLY exists in a land like Turkey. This sudden change has produced in their hearts an inclination towards repressive tyranny, as always happens when slave rules." 'Ahad Ha'Am warned: "We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR. The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside”.
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'Am) (1891): “The secret enabling our people to survive is ... that already in antiquities prophets taught it to respect only spiritual power and never to admire physical power. Therefore, it has not succumbed, like all ancient people, to a loss of identity when faced with stronger adversaries ... However, a political idea alien to the national culture can turn the people's heart away from spiritual power and produce a tendency to achieve its 'honors' by achieving physical power and political independence, thus severing the thread linking it with its past and losing the base which sustained it through out history”.
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (Ahad Ha'Am) (circa 1914): “Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in unrestricted freedom and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination ... The same lack of understanding he found in the boycott of Arab labour proclaimed by Jewish labour ... Apart from the political danger, I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: if it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve at the end of times power in Eretz Yisrael? And if this be the Messiah: I do not wish to see his coming” (Ahad Ha'Am quotyed in Ahad Ha'Am – a brief biography & quotes”, Palestine Remembered, 23 October 2001: http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story642.html ).
South Africa-born David Theo Goldberg is Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), holds faculty appointments as Professor of Comparative Literature and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), is a Fellow of the UCI Critical Theory Institute and is a leader in Critical Race Theory (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Theo_Goldberg ) .
Professor David Theo Goldberg to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting disinvestment in Israel: “I fully endorse the reasonable and courageous decision of the Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest all investments that support the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.” [1].
[1]. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting disinvestment in Israel, “Endorsements“, 2009: http://www.hsjp.org/endorsements/ .
Emma Goldman (anti-racist Jewish Lithuanian and thence American and Canadian anarchist writer and activist ) (1938): “I have no quarrel with our good friend [Reginald Reynolds] about his charges against the Zionists. In point of fact I have for many years opposed Zionism as the dream of capitalist Jewry the world over for a Jewish State with all its trimmings, such as Government, laws, police, militarism and the rest. In other words, a Jewish State machinery to protect the privileges of the few against the many” (Emma Goldman, “On Zionism”, 1938, reprinted in ‘British Imperialism & The Palestine Crisis: Selections from the Anarchist Journal ‘Freedom’ 1938–1948’, London: Freedom Press, 1989, pp. 24–27, The Anarchist Library: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-on-zionism ).
Richard Goldstone (1938-) is an outstanding , anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish South African lawyer who as a judge oversaw interpretation of the constitution of post-Apartheid South Africa. He headed a UN Human Rights Council inquiry into war crimes committed in the bloody 2008-2009 Israeli incursion into Gaza in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Goldstone ).
Richard Goldstone and UN Inquiry Report on Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Concentration Camp: “[Israeli incursion] a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorise a civilian population". [1].
[1]. UN Human Rights Council Report co-authored by Richard Goldstone, “Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, says UN Report”, New Statesman, 16 September 2009: http://www.newstatesman.com/2009/09/war-crimes-israel-gaza-rights .
Richard Goldstone: “Pursuing justice in this case [the charge of war crimes committed by the Israeli Defense Force] is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state. Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy. As a service to the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and for the equal application of international justice, the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account” (“Jewish Intellectuals Who Have Opposed Zionism and/or Israeli Racism, Injustices, Occupation, Apartheid and/or Ethnic Cleansing”, Hypertext: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Jewish%20Intellectuals%20Who%20Opposed%20Zionism%20Israel%20Racism%20Injustices%20Apartheid%20Ethnic%20Cleansing.htm ).
Professor David SG Goodman, according to the University of Sydney is Professor of Chinese Politics. He was educated at the University of Manchester (Politics and Modern History) Peking University (Economics) and the London School of Oriental and African Studies (Chinese language and Chinese Politics.) David Goodman’s research is concerned primarily with social and political change in China, particularly at the provincial and local level. In recent years he has written on the history of the Chinese Communist Party; China’s social history in the Twentieth Century; and local social and political change in China. David Goodman is currently working on two major research projects. The first is a social history project, looking at German colonial adventurers in China, 1870-1937. The second is concerned with contemporary social and political change - The New Rich and the State in China: The social basis of local power. Recent publications include China’s Campaign to ‘Open Up the West’: National, provincial and local perspectives (2004); The New Rich in China: Future rulers, present lives (2008); and Twentieth Century Colonialism in China (2010). Prof Goodman is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia (see: http://sydney.edu.au/arts/government_international_relations/staff/academic_staff/david_goodman.shtml ).
Professor David SG Goodman as a signatory on the "Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” (March 2010): “We are Jews from Australia, who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel’s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.
Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.
We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.’ [1].
[1]. Antony Loewenstein, "Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli "right of return", Media release, 3 March 2010:
Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) was a famed South African writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991 and was a vigorous anti-apartheid activist (see: http://www.newstatesman.com/africa/2010/06/interview-life-world-vote ).
Nadine Gordimer in 2008 controversially broke the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and attended a writers’ conference there on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the invasion-, dispossession-, race- and genocide-based apartheid state. Nadine Gordimer commented “I decided to come under a lot of pain, which I felt due to the fact that friends, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, told me not to come”. Asked about use of the term “apartheid” for the race-based state and its appalling treatment of Indigenous Palestinians, Nadine Gordimer and replied: “To me, it is accurate in one sense. The way people are treated in the occupied territories is exactly the way the blacks were treated in South Africa” [1].
Professor Neve Gordon is the head of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Israel. He is an outstanding Jewish Israeli opponent of the violent, racist policies of the State of Israel, of what he calls an “apartheid state” (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neve_Gordon ).
Professor Neve Gordon on the 2-state solution for just peace, 2009: “The two-state solution entails three central components:
1. Israel's full withdrawal to the 1967 border with possible one per one land swaps so that ultimately the total amount of land that was occupied will be returned.
2. Jerusalem's division according to the 1967 borders with certain land swaps to guarantee that each side has control over its own religious sites and large neighborhoods. These two components entail the dismantling of Israeli settlements and the return of the Jewish settlers to Israel.
3. The acknowledgment of the right of return of all Palestinians but with the following stipulation: While all Palestinians who so desire will be able to return to the fledgling Palestinian state, only a limited number agreed upon by the two sides will be allowed to return to Israel; those who cannot exercise this right or, alternatively, choose not to, will receive full compensation.
Obama's responsibility arises from the fact that the only way to advance US regional interests and to provide real security for the two peoples is by having Israelis and Palestinians sign a comprehensive agreement of this kind. Taking into account the results of the current Israeli elections, Obama will have to neutralize the rejectionists in order to resolve this bloody conflict once and for all.” [1].
Professor Neve Gordon, on the need to boycott an Apartheid Israel, 2009: “It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.
I say this because Israel has reached a historic crossroads, and times of crisis call for dramatic measures. I say this as a Jew who has chosen to raise his children in Israel, who has been a member of the Israeli peace camp for almost 30 years and who is deeply anxious about the country's future.
The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state. For more than 42 years, Israel has controlled the land between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea. Within this region about 6 million Jews and close to 5 million Palestinians reside. Out of this population, 3.5 million Palestinians and almost half a million Jews live in the areas Israel occupied in 1967, and yet while these two groups live in the same area, they are subjected to totally different legal systems. The Palestinians are stateless and lack many of the most basic human rights. By sharp contrast, all Jews -- whether they live in the occupied territories or in Israel -- are citizens of the state of Israel.
The question that keeps me up at night, both as a parent and as a citizen, is how to ensure that my two children as well as the children of my Palestinian neighbors do not grow up in an apartheid regime.” [2].
[1]. Dr Neve Gordon, “Few peacemakers in Israel’s Knesset”, The Nation, 10 February2009: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090223/gordon .
Tony Greenstein ( anti-racist Jewish British Labour activist falsely defamed as an “anti-Semite” and expelled from the pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid British Labour Party) (2018): “I am accused of ‘anti-Semitism for the same reason as thousands of people, including Jeremy Corbyn, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Gerald Kaufman and Hannah Arendt have been so accused. Most of the targets of these accusations are themselves Jewish. This is an accusation made by Jewish racists (Zionists) against their anti-racist Jewish opponents. My only crime is that I oppose Zionism and the Apartheid State of Israel. I was targeted by the Jewish Labour movement because I'm Jewish and because I oppose the state of Israel and its discrimination against Palestinians. I'm an anti-Zionist, I'm opposed to all forms of anti-Semitism and all racism" (Oliver Milne, “Labour Party activist “with history of noxious behaviour” expelled for using offensive anti-Semitic term “zio””, Daily Mirror, 18 February 2018: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-party-activist-expelled-thatcher-12048349 ).
[Editor's note. Zionism is genocidal racism in awful explicit intent from genocidal psychopath Theodor Herzl in the 19th century to Benjamin Netanyahu in the 21st century (see Gideon Polya, “Zionist quotes reveal genocidal racism”, MWC News, 12 January 2018: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/69955-zionist-quotes-reveal-genocidal-racism.html and Gideon Polya, “Zionist quotes re racism and Palestinian Genocide”, Palestinian Genocide : https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/zionist-quotes ) and in appalling practice evidenced by the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (“Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ and Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/ . The racist Zionists and all their supporters should be sidelined from public life as have been like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and the Ku Klux Klan. Linguistics and politics purists might quibble, but "Zio", "Ziofascist", "Zionazi", "Nazi-style", "pro-Apartheid", "Apartheider"and "neo-Nazi" are quite reasonable for the racist Zionists and their Western supporters who are complicit in the following appalling and intentional crimes.
While the 7.0 million non-Palestinian Israelis have full human rights, the 1.8 million Palestinian Israelis are subject to Nazi-style race laws. Further, the 5 million Occupied Palestinians (50% children and 75% women and children) are excluded from all human tights specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and are highly abusively confined to the blockaded Gaza Concentration Camp (2 million) or to West Bank ghettoes (3 million) under Jewish Israeli military rule. In particular, Apartheid Israel determines that 72% of its presently 50% Indigenous Palestinian subjects are excluded from voting for the government ruling them i.e. egregious Apartheid that is condemned as a crime against Humanity by the UN and International law.
Anti-Semitism comes in 2 equally repugnant forms, (1) anti-Arab anti-Semitism against 14 million ethnically and culturally Semitic Palestinians , 300 million ethnically and culturally Semitic Arabs and 1,600 million largely culturally Semitic Muslims, and (2) anti-Jewish anti-Semitism against 17 million largely culturally Semitic Jews. US-backed Apartheid Israel is profoundly anti-Arab anti-Semitic through the invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of Arab Palestine (2.3 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, or from imposed deprivation, 2.2 million, since the British invasion of Palestine in WW1 versus 4,000 Zionist invader deaths at the hands of Palestinians) and through support for the endless US War on Muslims (32 million Muslim deaths in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity in which 3,000 were killed and may well have Apartheid Israel as well as the Zionist-subverted US Government). Apartheid Israel and its traitorous racist Zionist supporters around the world are profoundly anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by falsely conflating their immense crimes with all Jews, and falsely defaming anti-racist Jews who expose and oppose Apartheid Israeli and Zionist atrocities (“Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ ).
The comprehensively racist 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law of Apartheid Israel offensively and intolerably ignores the Indigenous Palestinians who are 50% of Israeli subjects and enshrines a special, dominant, race-based position for the Jewish Israelis who constitute a 47% minority of the subjects of Apartheid Israel. 5 million Occupied Palestinian subjects of Apartheid Israel are excluded from 90% of Palestine and from all Human Rights specified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 7 million Exiled Palestinians are excluded from 100% of Palestine that was continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years to the dawn of agrarian civilization. The world must act over Apartheid Israel as it did over Apartheid South Africa with Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its racist supporters, notably pro-Apartheid America and pro-Apartheid Australia. With 90% of Palestine now ethnically cleansed of Indigenous Palestinians, the “2-state solution” is dead. A clear, humane solution to the continuing and deadly human rights catastrophe in Palestine is a unitary state (a “one state solution”) as in post-Apartheid South Africa that would involve return of all refugees, zero tolerance for racism, equal rights for all, all human rights for all, one-person-one-vote, justice, goodwill, reconciliation, airport-level security, nuclear weapons removal, internationally-guaranteed national security initially based on the present armed forces, and untrammelled access for all citizens to all of Palestine. It can and should happen tomorrow (see Gideon Polya, “Israeli Jewish Nation-State Law enshrines Apartheid and genocidal racism”, Countercurrents, 24 July 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/07/24/israeli-jewish-nation-state-law-enshrines-apartheid-and-genocidal-racism/ ).]
Outstanding anti-racist Jewish American human rights activist, lawyer, author, investigative journalist and critic of western imperialism, Apartheid Israel and the US surveillance state, Glenn Greenwald, writing in the UK Guardian (2013): “Israel’s defense minister warned Tuesday that if Israel does not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians, it will be either a binational state or an undemocratic apartheid state. . . .“The simple truth is, if there is one state” including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, “it will have to be either binational or undemocratic. . . . if this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” Writing about the Israel/apartheid controversy without mentioning Barak’s recent statement would be like writing a column about the Senate reconciliation process without mentioning health care, or writing about the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency doctrine without mentioning Afghanistan… there has been an intense campaign to demonize those who analogize Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to apartheid (as Carter did, in the same way as Barak). That demonization campaign becomes impossible if Israel’s own Defense Minister makes exactly the same point… Barak’s willingness to explicitly raise the comparison that is all but off-limits in American political discussion once again illustrates the bizarre fact that debates over Israeli policies are far more permissive and open in Israel than they are in the United States” (Glenn Greenwald, “Dredging up the Israel/Apartheid question:, Salon, 2 March 2010: http://www.salon.com/2010/03/02/israel_29/ ).
Glenn Greenwald (an anti-racist Jewish American lawyer and writer , an editor of “The Intercept”, and famous for publishing documents obtained by Edward Snowden) (2016): “There has been no progress toward a two-state solution for many years. The composition of Israel’s Jewish population — which has become far more belligerent and right-wing than previous generations — has increasingly moved the country further away from that goal. There are key ministers in Israel’s government, including its genuinely extremist justice minister, who are openly and expressly opposed to a two-state solution. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself repeatedly made clear he opposes such an agreement, both in words and in deeds. In sum, Israel intends to continue to rule over and occupy Palestinians and deny them self-governance, political liberties, and voting rights indefinitely. Whether despite this aggression and oppression, or because of it, the Obama administration has continually protected Israel with unstinting loyalty and lavished it with arms and money… Even as Western consensus continues to revere the most stalwart supporters of South Africa’s apartheid regime — Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Shimon Peres — it at least now regards apartheid itself in that country as a historic disgrace. History should regard those enabling Israel’s own march to permanent apartheid in exactly the same light. The most aggressive and consistent enablers of this apartheid are found at the top of the U.S. political class” (Glenn Greenwald, “U.S. admits Israelis building permanent apartheid regime – weeks after giving it $38 billion”, The Intercept, 7 October 2016: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/ ).
Gush Shalom (“The Peace Bloc”) is an Israeli peace group founded by eminent Jewish Israeli Uri Avnery and dedicated to achieving peace and reconciliation with the Palestinian people (see Gush Shalom: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/index_en.html and Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gush_Shalom ) .
Gush Shalom on the “Aims of Gush Shalom”: "The Aims of Gush Shalom. The primary aim of Gush Shalom is is to influence Israeli public opinion and lead it towards peace and conciliation with the Palestinian people, based on the following principles:
Putting an end to the occupation,
Accepting the right of the Palestinian people to establish an independent and sovereign State of Palestine in all the territories occupied by Israel in 1967,
Reinstating the pre-1967 "Green Line" as the border between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine (with possible minor exchanges of territories agreed between the parties); the border will be open for the free movement of people and goods, subject to mutual agreement.
Establishing Jerusalem as the capital of the two states, with East Jerusalem (including the Haram al-Sharif) serving as the capital of Palestine and West Jerusalem (including the Western Wall) serving as the capital of Israel. The city is to be united on the physical and municipal level, based on mutual agreement.
Recognizing in principle the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, allowing each refugee to choose freely between compensation and repatriation to Palestine and Israel, and fixing by mutual agreement the number of refugees who will be able to return to Israel in annual quotas, without undermining the foundations of Israel.
Safeguarding the security of both Israel and Palestine by mutual agreement and guarantees.
Striving for overall peace between Israel and all Arab countries and the creation of a regional union.” [1].
[1]. Gush Shalom, ‘The aims of Gush Shalom” : http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/about/aims/ .