Mordechai Vanunu, the son of a rabbi, is an heroic Moroccan-born Jewish Israeli peace activist who blew the whistle on Israeli nuclear terrorism and was abusively imprisoned without public trial on and off essentially ever since his kidnapping in Rome in 1986 (18 years in prison, 11 years in highly abusive solitary confinement). He subsequently became a Christian (see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu ).
Mordechai Vanunu on racist Zionist Israeli bigotry and his conversion to Christianity: “I want to tell those who say I am a traitor, I suffered here 18 years because I am a Christian.” [1].
Mordechai Vanunu on highly abusive 11-year solitary confinement by Apartheid Israel: “You didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy.”[1].
Mordechai Vanunu on Israeli nuclear terrorism and Palestine: “"I am neither a traitor nor a spy, I only wanted the world to know what was happening…"Despite everything that was published, nothing changed - no one came to Israel and made [nuclear disarmament] demands … We don't need a Jewish state. There needs to be a Palestinian state. Jews can, and have lived anywhere, so a Jewish State is not necessary.” [1, 2].
[1]. Wikipedia, “Mordechai Vanunu”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu .
[2]. BBC, “Vanunu defiant ahead of release”, 19 April 2004: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3640989.stm .
Patrick Weiniger is a Melbourne socialist activist living in Melbourne and a regular contributor to the Socialist Alternative magazine.
Patrick Weiniger, “Why Jews should oppose Israel”, 2009: “Jews internationally have been involved in various struggles against racism. Many Jews in South Africa played a prominent and courageous role in the struggle against apartheid. Activists like Joe Slovo and Ruth First not only criticised apartheid: they sided with the oppressed black population and joined the ANC. Today anti-racist Jews must struggle against the violent apartheid system which defines the state of Israel. To describe Israel in these terms is not hyperbole. The apartheid wall in the West Bank is so named because it imprisons the Palestinians in small, disconnected parcels of land that can never be the basis of a viable state. In South Africa, these "homelands" were called Bantustans. Gaza is another such Bantustan… Zionism - that is, support for a specifically Jewish state in historical Palestine - is a political doctrine. It has never been a necessary or automatic component of Jewish identity. It does not make you a traitor to Jews to oppose the idea of a Jewish state that discriminates against other races and religions. There is nothing anti-Semitic in calling for a secular, democratic state in all of historical Palestine, with equal rights for Jews and non-Jews. Undoubtedly many anti-racist Jews are uneasy about what Israel does. Yet too few of us actually take a stand against Israel.” [1].
[1]. Patrick Weiniger , “Why Jews should oppose Israel”, Socialist Alternative, Issue 137, February 2009:
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss (Orthodox Jewish humanitarian): “Zionism is racism” (Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, Orthodox Jewish humanitarian on YouTube, “Zionism is racism and racism is bad”, 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahHIOMwEL_o&t=2s ).
Yisroel Dovid Weiss (anti-racist Jewish Rabbi): “Zionism is only around 100 years old. It is the transformation from religion to nationalism, to materialism created by non-religious Jews who hated their religion. The reason why they use the name Israel, the Star of David, hijacking, stealing the identity of Judaism and the Jewish people is in order to gain a legitimacy for their existence that should lead people to say, ‘oh, it is God given to them’ and that they should use fear and intimidate people from speaking out against their actions because they will call those that do anti-Semitic; it couldn’t be anything further from the Truth”( quoted in Anthony Mathew Jacob, “Palestine, to whom does it belong?”, Countercurrents, 20 May 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2021/05/palestine-to-whom-does-it-belong/ ).
Anti-racist Jewish American scholars Glen Weyl (an assistant professor of economics and law at the University of Chicago) and Steven Levitsky (a professor of government at Harvard University) (2015): “We are lifelong Zionists. Like other progressive Jews, our support for Israel has been founded on two convictions: first, that a state was necessary to protect our people from future disaster; and second, that any Jewish state would be democratic, embracing the values of universal human rights that many took as a lesson of the Holocaust. Undemocratic measures undertaken in pursuit of Israel’s survival, such as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the denial of basic rights to Palestinians living there, were understood to be temporary. But we must face reality: The occupation has become permanent. Nearly half a century after the Six-Day War, Israel is settling into the apartheid-like regime against which many of its former leaders warned. The settler population in the West Bank has grown 30-fold, from about 12,000 in 1980 to 389,000 today. The West Bank is increasingly treated as part of Israel, with the green line demarcating the occupied territories erased from many maps. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin declared recently that control over the West Bank is “not a matter of political debate. It is a basic fact of modern Zionism.” This “basic fact” poses an ethical dilemma for American Jews: Can we continue to embrace a state that permanently denies basic rights to another people? Yet it also poses a problem from a Zionist perspective: Israel has embarked on a path that threatens its very existence… It is thus, reluctantly but resolutely, that we are refusing to travel to Israel, boycotting products produced there and calling on our universities to divest and our elected representatives to withdraw aid to Israel. Until Israel seriously engages with a peace process that either establishes a sovereign Palestinian state or grants full democratic citizenship to Palestinians living in a single state, we cannot continue to subsidize governments whose actions threaten Israel’s long-term survival” (Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl, “We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel”, Washington Post, 23 October 2015: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-zionist-case-for-boycotting-israel/2015/10/23/ac4dab80-735c-11e5-9cbb-790369643cf9_story.html?utm_term=.dfeafec3b09f ).
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is a London-based Jewish campaigner for Palestinian rights. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions committee. In 2006 she helped form Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG) to support the work of PSC's BIG campaign. She is also an active member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the largest Jewish organisation in the UK concerned with Palestinian rights (see: http://www.paltelegraph.com/opinions/editorials/1984-boycott-the-sane-response-to-israeli-apartheid and http://www.bigcampaign.org/index.php?page=jbig ).
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and other members of J-BIG to UK media, 2007: “:We welcome the courageous decision of the National Union of Journalists to boycott Israeli goods (Letters, April 23). Given Israel's contempt for international law, with the complicity of the US and UK governments, pressure has to be increased by civil society if justice is to be achieved. A boycott of Israeli goods is a legitimate form of grassroots action and is particularly appropriate as Israel is destroying the Palestinian economy. Such a boycott has been called for by Israeli peace organisations.
As a result of its illegal occupation, Israel is able to flood the Palestinian market with its products, while preventing Palestinian farmers from growing and trading their own. We believe Israel's actions betray Jewish ethical traditions - the cutting down of olive and fruit trees is prohibited by Jewish law. The continuing occupation and exploitation of Palestinian land is a major obstacle to peace for Israelis and Arabs alike which has global implications for world peace.
Deborah Fink, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Mike Cushman, Sylvia Finzi, Tony Greenstein, Ruth Tenne, Deborah Maccoby, Prof Moshe Machover, Mike Marqusee,
Jews for Boycotting Israel Goods.” [1].
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi on boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Apartheid Israel, 2009: “The movement to boycott Israel is becoming respectable. In Europe and America as well as in the Middle East and many parts of the developing world, people of conscience - including many Jews - are rejecting anti-Arab prejudice and Zionist mythology and seeing Israel for what it is - an ethnocentric state which deserves to be ostracised just as South Africa was ostracised during the apartheid era. Groups like mine - Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods - support the call made by nearly 200 Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005 for a broad campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions, including an institutional academic and cultural boycott, until Israel respects Palestinian human rights and abides by international law.” [2].
[1]. Letter by J-BIG members to UK media, 2007, specifically in the Jewish Chronicle, 27 April 2007 and in the UK Guardian, “Apartheid and boycotts in the Middle East”, 25 April 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/25/israel.comment .
[2]. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, “Boycott – the sane response to Israeli Apartheid”, The Palestinian Telegraph, 24 August 2009: http://www.paltelegraph.com/opinions/editorials/1984-boycott-the-sane-response-to-israeli-apartheid .
Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900; the first president of the American Reform rabbinical college) in opposing Zionism: “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” (Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, “Judaism: A Beginner’s Guide”, Oneworld, 2010).
Tim Wise (anti-racist Jewish American writer, essayist, author and educator) (2012): “ Here I lend my voice in support of the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, having been approached to do so by students at the University of Regina, in Canada. As an anti-Zionist Jew I feel morally compelled to support this effort. Though this is just a simple statement of support, I explain my views on Israel/Palestine and Zionism in a number of articles, which are available on this site, here, here, here, here, and here. I know I’ll be condemned for this position, as well as the longer articles, by those who, like me, were subjected to endless pro-Israel propaganda growing up. So be it. And I understand that this is an emotional issue for many of us who are Jews. But I submit to you that it is also an emotional issue to Palestinians, and that our pain at hearing an alternative view of facts on the ground there quite frankly pales compared to that generated by the reality with which the latter live every day. Facts are facts, and the facts are, Zionism supports, BY DEFINITION the oppression of the Palestinian people. What’s more, it is a philosophy that is historically rooted in an ironic and bizarre self-hatred for Jews, and permanent victimology. It is healthy for no one. And if you don’t like me saying that, so be it. But please keep an open mind and think seriously about these issues. They are that important” (Tim Wise, “Tim Wise Statement in Support of Israel Boycott/Sanctions/Divestment – 2012”, Tim Wise, 15 June 2012: http://www.timwise.org/2012/06/tim-wise-statement-in-support-of-israel-boycottsanctionsdivestment-2012/ ).
Dr Ron Witton is an Honorary Principal Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia (see: http://www.uow.edu.au/law/honoraryfellows/index.html ).
Dr Ron Witton 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:
Naomi Wolf (anti-racist Jewish American author and activist) (2014): “I mourn genocide in Gaza because I am the granddaughter of a family half wiped out in a holocaust and I know genocide when I see it” (Naomi Wolf quoted in Center for Constitutional Rights, “The genocide of the Palestinian People: an international law and human rights perspective”, 25 August 2016: https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective ).
Ronit Yarosky is an anti-racist Jewish Canadian human rights activist and peace activist, and one of the founders of the Montreal Dialogue Group for Jewish-Palestinian dialogue.
Ronit Yarosky on realizing the extent of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinins (2012) “Most of these memories from my [Israeli] military service only came back to me after some ten years. They were transformative events, only I did not realize it at the time. The changes within me began when I started to question and think and ask, while I was doing my MA (at McGill, re Israel]. This is astounding in and of itself, that I could be at the level of a graduate thesis and discover that I knew so little… [I discovered that] My uncle’s very house was a Palestinian house. How did I not know?... Was everything I had learnt in my whole life a lie?... This was the beginning of a total, albeit slow, metamorphosis for me, my turning point – the realization that that there is more than one story in history. . There are multiple stories. And I grew to realize that we cheat ourselves as human beings by telling only one side… To quote my favorite phrase, “You have to be the change you want to see in the world.” [1, 2].
[1]. Ronit Yarosky, “The whole truth” in “Beyond Tribal Loyalties. Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists”, edited by Avigail Abarbanel (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) (pp 99, 100, 103).
[2]. Ronit Yarosky 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 .
Yesh Din (Israeli human rights organization) reporting legal advice from Michael Sfard (2020): “The alibi used by successive Israeli governments that the situation is temporary and there is no desire or intent to maintain the domination and oppression of Palestinians in the area or preserve their inferior status falls apart in the face of the clear evidence that the separate policies and practices Israel applies in the occupied territory are designed to maintain and cement the domination and oppression of Palestinians and the supremacy of the Israelis who migrated to the area. That is not all. As described in this opinion, the government of Israel is carrying out a process of “gradual annexation” in the West Bank. From an administrative perspective, annexation means the revocation of military rule in the annexed area and the territorial extension of powers held by Israeli authorities deep into the West Bank. Continued creeping legal annexation, let alone official annexation of a particular part of the West Bank through legislation that would apply Israeli law and administration there, is an amalgamation of the regimes. This could mean strengthening the argument, which already is being heard, that the crime of Apartheid is not committed only in the West Bank. That the Israeli regime in its entirety is an apartheid regime. That Israel is an Apartheid state. That is distressing and shameful. And even if not all Israelis are guilty of the crime, we are all responsible for it. It is our duty, each and every one of us, to take resolute action to stop the commission of this crime” (Yesh Din, “The occupation of the West Bank and the crime of Apartheid: legal opinion”, Yesh Din, 9 July 2020: https://www.yesh-din.org/en/the-occupation-of-the-west-bank-and-the-crime-of-apartheid-legal-opinion/ ).
A vision of collective identity, purpose and values written by and for young Jews committed to justice in Israel and Palestine. It is an invitation and call to action for both our peers and our elders, launched as a counter-protest at the 2010 Jewish Federation General Assembly in New Orleans.
I. we exist.
We exist. We are everywhere. We speak and love and dream in every language. We pray three times a day or only during the high holidays or when we feel like we really need to or not at all. We are punks and students and parents and janitors and Rabbis and freedom fighters. We are your children, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren. We embrace diaspora, even when it causes us a great deal of pain. We are the rubble of tangled fear, the deliverance of values. We are human. We are born perfect. We assimilate, or we do not. We are not apathetic. We know and name persecution when we see it. Occupation has constricted our throats and fattened our tongues. We are feeding each other new words. We have family, we build family, we are family. We re-negotiate. We atone. We re-draw the map every single day. We travel between worlds. This is not our birthright, it is our necessity.
II. we remember.
We remember slavery in Egypt, and we remember hiding our celebrations and ritual. We remember brave, desperate resistance. We honor a legacy of radical intellectuals and refugees. We remember the labor movement. We remember the camps. We remember when we aged too quickly. We remember that we are still young, and powerful. We remember being branded as counterrevolutionaries in one state and hunted during the red scare of another. We remember our ancestors’ suffering and our own. Our stories are older than any brutal war. We remember those who cannot afford to take time to heal. We remember how to build our homes, and our holiness, out of time and thin air, and so do not need other people’s land to do so. We remember solidarity as a means of survival and an act of affirmation, and we are proud.
III. we refuse.
We refuse to have our histories distorted or erased, or appropriated by a corporate war machine. We will not call this liberation. We refuse to knowingly oppress others, and we refuse to oppress each other. We refuse to be whitewashed. We will not carry the legacy of terror. We refuse to allow our identities to be cut, cleaned, packaged nicely, and sold back to us. We won’t be won over by free vacations and scholarship money. We won’t buy the logic that slaughter means safety. We will not quietly witness the violation of human rights in Palestine. We refuse to become the mother who did not scream when wise King Solomon resolved to split her baby in two. We are better than this. We have ancestors to honor. We have allies to honor. We have ourselves to honor.
IV. we commit.
We commit ourselves to peace. We will stand up with honest bodies, to offer honest bread. We will stand up with our words, our pens, our songs, our paintbrushes, our open hands. We commit to re-envisioning “homeland,” to make room for justice. We will stand in the way of colonization and displacement. We will take this to the courts and to the streets. We will learn. We will teach this in the schools and in our homes. We will stand with you, if you choose to stand with our allies. We will grieve the lies we’ve swallowed. We commit to equality, solidarity, and integrity. We will soothe the deepest tangles of our roots and stretch our strong arms to the sky. We demand daylight for our stories, for all stories. We seek breathing room and dignity for all people. We are committed to the struggle. We are the struggle. We will become mentors, elders, and radical listeners for the next generation. It is our sacred obligation. We will not stop. We exist. We are young Jews, and we get to decide what that means.
Professor Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was an outstanding Jewish American activist, civil libertarian, anti-war activist, historian, playwright, political activist, social critic, and socialist. The author of some 20 books, Zinn was Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University, Boston Massachusetts, USA and the author of the best-seller “A People’s History of the United States” (for detailed biography see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn ).
Professor Howard Zinn 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 Howard Zinn to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting divestment in Israel: “I want to express my admiration and support for the actions of Hampshire College students in their successful campaign for divestment from financial ties with Israel. It is extremely important for Israel to know that its violence against Gaza and its long occupation of Palestinian lands is not acceptable to the people in the United States. I hope your campaign will set an example for students all over the country, and lead to justice in the Middle East, as the divestment campaign helped end Apartheid in South Africa.” [2].
[1]. Letter from Howard Zinn with Tariq Ali, Russell Banks, John Berger, Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk Eduardo Galeano, Charles Glass, Naomi Klein, W.J.T. Mitchell, Arundhati Roy, Harold Pinter, Jose Saramago, Giiuliana Sgrena, and Gore Vidal re Palestine, Peninsular Peace and Justice Centre, Palo Alto, California, USA, 19 July 2006: http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060726115326120&query=zinn .
[2]. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a New Hampshire student group promoting disinvestment in Israel, “Endorsements“, 2009: http://www.hsjp.org/endorsements/ .
Zochrot (Israeli NGO): “Zochrot ("remembering" in Hebrew) is an NGO working since 2002 to promote acknowledgement and accountability for the ongoing injustices of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 and the reconceptualization of the Return [of Palestnian refugees] as the imperative redress of the Nakba and a chance for a better life for all the country's inhabitants… Zochrot envisions Return as an extended and multidimensional process, which includes not only the physical return of refugees to this country, but also their appropriate and dignified integration in an equal, joint Palestinian-Jewish society” (see "Zochrot": https://zochrot.org/en/content/17 ).