Press Release: From Tel Aviv to Toronto, Los Angeles to London, Chicago to San Francisco, Jews Say No to Israeli Genocide

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Jul 25, 2014 Palestine-Israel
Press Release: From Tel Aviv to Toronto, Los Angeles to London, Chicago to San Francisco, Jews Say No to Israeli Genocide

Press Release: From Tel Aviv to Toronto, Los Angeles to London, Chicago to San Francisco, Jews Say No to Israeli Genocide

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by the International Jewish anti-Zionist Network.]

From Tel Aviv to Toronto, Los Angeles to London, Chicago to San Francisco, Jews Say No to Israeli Genocide

We call on Jews all over the world to follow the call from Haider Eid, political activist and commentator, to “besiege Israeli consulates,” and to protest Zionist events attempting to justify Israel’s massacre of Palestinians. Below are reports of actions Jews against genocide are taking or participating in. 

Please join us – organize pickets, protests, creative actions, sit-ins, demonstrations and direct action to protest – in the loudest possible way – the brutal massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. 

Please also add your name to the over 200 signers of the following statement from Jews for the Palestinian Right of Return. 

Please email us reports of your actions to ijan@ijsn.net and 
jewsagainstgenocide1948@gmail.com so that we can let the world know how many of us are taking action to stop Israel’s crimes. 

LONDON

IJAN-UK organized a Jewish bloc to participate in a demonstration on Saturday, July 19th in which tens of thousands of people took the streets. As reported in the on-line journal, Vice: 

 To both Jews and non-Jews the idea of an anti-Zionist Jew can sound like a contradiction in terms—an abuse of Rabbi Hillel’s most famous ethical aphorism, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me." But for Sam Weinstein, and for around 30 others, me included, tucked together in a small Jewish bloc at Saturday’s Gaza demo in London, standing against Israel is precisely what our background demands. “I come from a Jewish tradition that has always fought for the underdog,” Sam told me as he unfurled a banner of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network in the sticky heat. “One that has fought for social justice because historically we were the ones getting killed by the state.”  

 

TORONTO 

In Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, IJAN members have helped organize and participate in demonstrations against Israel’s military assault on Gaza and the Palestinian people, and in response to the call from civil society in Palestine. Demands include calling for an end to Canada’s unequivocal support for Israel, “right or wrong” and recognition of the connection between Israeli policies towards Palestinians and Canada’s genocide against Indigenous peoples here on Turtle Island. On Friday 11 July in Toronto, over 3000 people protested and marched from the Israeli consulate to the main intersection of Yonge and Bloor Streets. The following week, daily vigils were held in front of the Israeli consulate in Toronto at the noon hour by members of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), IJAN Canada, Pax Christi, and others, culminating in another demonstration on Saturday 19 July. Also on 19 July IJAN members took part in a demonstration in Hamilton, where over 1000 people rallied against Israeli war crimes. Further actions are in the works, including a joint statement with IJV on recent attacks against Muslims and a Muslim community center. 
 

CHICAGO 

On Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Stand With Us, a pro-Israel right wing group in America, organized a Stand with Israel protest outside of the Israeli consulate in downtown Chicago, IL. The Coalition for Justice in Palestine, a coalition of Palestinian, Muslim and Arab community, religious and student organizations in Chicago, convened a Stand With Gaza counter protest. On a busy Tuesday afternoon in the heart of downtown Chicago, the two demonstrations faced off, with the pro-Palestinian rally clearly showing larger numbers and winning the support of pedestrians and motorists across the crowded streets. 

In the middle of the demonstration, Jews for Justice In Palestine (JJP), a collective of Chicago Jews in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle against Israeli occupation, dumped a pile of bloodied baby dolls in full view of the pro-Israel rally and the Israeli consulate. The dolls symbolize the innocent children that have died as a result of Israel`s terrible bombardment and invasion of Gaza over the last two weeks.

JJP stands with the Palestinian people in mourning the over 550 Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed, the over 3000 wounded, and the over 80,000 who have fled their homes since Israel`s assault began. JJP also stands with the Palestinian community worldwide as they take to the streets and resist the occupation. As Jews, we are resolute that this bloodshed may not continue in our name, and we urge fellow Jews all over the world to continue to stand with the Palestinian people, protest outside of Israeli embassies and consulates, and amplify the movement for BDS to end the occupation and win justice for Palestine.   

Occupation and Apartheid Are Not Jewish Values!

Solidarity and Liberation Are! 


SAN FRANCISCO

No Cover for Israel’s Brutality: Jews of Conscience Disrupt Israeli Consul General in San Francisco

As bombs rain down on Gaza, and Israel intensifies its latest genocidal attacks with a ground invasion, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, and the Board of Rabbis of Northern California hosted “Stop the Sirens in Israel: An Emergency Solidarity Gathering” at Temple Emanu-El. “Stop the Sirens” is a national effort sponsored by the Reform Movement and led by the Jewish Federations of North America. In San Francisco, the Israeli Consul General, Andy David, spoke—or tried to speak. 

Members of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and other Jews of conscience staged seven disruptions inside the event, as members of Queers Undermining Israeli Terror, Jewish Voice for Peace, and IJAN demonstrated outside. Our message was clear: any institution that seeks to offer political cover for Israel’s brutality will face opposition and isolation. 

Disruptors, who included children and grandchildren of survivors of the Nazi genocide, interrupted the proceedings by shouting “stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians,” and “never again for anyone.” 

Our action was staged in tandem with a funeral march organized by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, attended by thousands in downtown San Francisco. The Jewish action drew away reactionary Zionist demonstrators and disrupted the media frame of “Jews versus Arabs” by asserting a Jewish voice in strong opposition to the attacks and siege on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. The action was covered by mainstream media television sources KTVU and CBS. 

Predictably, Zionist audience members and counter-demonstrators reacted with violence—pushing, hitting, and verbally attacking activists.

Critics accused us of desecrating a sacred space. But they have it backwards: by inviting an apologist for Israeli war crimes, and in offering prayers to the Israeli Defense Forces, the Zionist hosts desecrated the sacred space. We reject the conflation of Zionism and Judaism which makes a mockery of Jewish values, and manipulates and abuses Jewish histories of persecution by claiming that Israel acts to protect Jews. We call on Jews everywhere stand firmly, and to take action to demand the end of Israel’s bombing, siege, occupation, and colonization.

Stand against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, stand in support of Palestinian self-determination and resistance, stand on the side of life. 

Click here for short video of protest and disruption.  

  

 
[Disruption of a very intense event sponsored by JCRC and the Jewish Federation at the temple in SF – Sirens for Israel.]




[Margot, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, speaks at a Palestinian rally.]
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412