Author: Marilyn Garson

AJV’s statement:

We are anti-Zionist Jews. Got that – we are anti-Zionist.

Zionists, Christian and Jewish, have been trying to convince you that Zionist really means Jewish, or that Jewish must mean Israel, or that anti-Zionist means you’re a bad person.

Let’s try that again, with help from the International Court of Justice. Zionism is Israel’s regime of power, not a religion. Zionism is Israel’s nationalist, settler-colonial, genocidal and now formally criminal project. It is represented in Aotearoa by this embassy. The Zionist project has been found guilty of apartheid. Apartheid is a crime against humanity, and we are anti-apartheid. Zionism illegally took Palestinian land by force. It occupies and racially segregates and prevents self-determination and we are anti all of that. The international court of justice has found that Zionism steals resources and dispossesses families, and we are anti those crimes, too. We are against all the crimes of which Zionism has finally been convicted.

Anti-Zionism is our positive statement of values, our love of humanity, and our commitment to Palestinians who have been the victims of four generations of Zionism’s crimes.

We are pro-truth, pro-justice, pro-human dignity and pro-civilian protections. We call on our government to be that, too. Take the side of civilians. Stand up for the return of refugees to their homes, as the court has decided. Call for reparations as the court does. Act as we are instructed by the court to act on the scene of such unbearable crimes. The court has instructed us to cease diplomatic relations, treaty relations, economic and trade and investment relations with Israel. BDS, anyone?

Ambassador, you are the lookout man for criminals and they have been caught. Go home and stop using our name as your shield. Around here, we do not call Israel the Jewish state. We call it the convicted state. We are anti your illegal Zionist project. We do not want you here. The International Court has instructed us to send you packing.

We anti-Zionist Jews stand side by side with our Palestinian whanau awaiting action on the court’s findings. We will raise their voices until the crimes of Zionism have ended. Think of us as officers of the court. The highest court of the United Nations has ruled that we must do everything in our power to end Israel’s illegal occupation. Palestine must be free.

Marilyn Garson and Fred Albert, co-founders

Alternative (anti-Zionist) Jewish Voices

Pro-Palestinian Jewish Groups from 16 Countries Hold First Ever International Congress in London 

WHAT: After almost four years of meeting monthly on-line, leaders and long-time organisers representing 20 Jewish groups from 16 countries across the globe supporting justice for the Palestinian people are meeting in person in London for the first ever congress of the International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP). 

Participants will also be joining the Jewish Bloc on the National Demonstration for Gaza in London on Saturday June 8, expressing our conviction that justice for the Palestinian people is a precondition for justice for us all. 

WHEN: June 8th – 9th, 2024

WHY: While Israel claims to speak for the Jewish people, growing numbers of Jews around the world are declaring that Israel does not speak in our name. Our  organisations are partners in the global movement for Palestinian justice. We have come together to learn from one another and maximise the impact of our work. We stand in strong opposition to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and are active participants in global organising demanding a cease-fire now and full justice and dignity for the Palestinian people. 

WHO: Social justice organisers, educators, writers, and others representing Jewish groups from 16 countries across the globe: New Zealand, Belgium, France, Israel, United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Luxembourg, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, UK, Germany, Catalonia and Netherlands. (See below the full list of organisations and details of our spokespeople.) 

“Around the world progressive Jewish groups have taken strong stands against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, staging eye-catching public protests. The gathering of representatives of many of those groups in London from 8-9 June aimed at maximising impact through closer international cooperation is a natural and significant initiative spearheaded by the International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP). It constitutes a major challenge to Jewish establishment bodies giving carte blanche to Israel to continue flouting international law.” 

Antony Lerman, author, Whatever Happened to Antisemitism: Redefinition and Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’, former Director, Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 

For further information, or to arrange interviews with our international representatives at the protests on Friday or Saturday or at any other time, please contact: 

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi media@jvl.org.uk 07759 024659

Donna Nevel denevel@gmail.com, 01-917-570-4371 

QUOTES

Marilyn Garson, Alternative Jewish Voices, Aotearoa (New Zealand)

“I made this trip to represent AJV because we see genocide being done in our names. We came to throw our weight on the side of life, peace and justice. We will not let our friends – our world – be harmed without making our voices heard. Jewish people are not endangered by protest; all people are endangered by silence in the face of genocide. 

IJCJP has let us learn from worldwide experience, while we brought the wisdom of small communities. This conference is very bittersweet. We’ll finally meet in person, but every one of us is heartbroken. It will be quite a mix of emotion and purpose.”  

Stefanie Fox, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace, United States

“As we witness the daily horrifying devastation of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, we know that groups and communities across the globe are organizing and protesting–with tremendous power and deep conviction–in solidarity with Palestinians. As a US based organization, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is proud to join Jewish groups from 16 countries across the globe this week in London to strengthen and deepen our work as a collective Jewish voice outraged by Israel’s actions and standing strong with Palestine. As partners in the movement for Palestinian justice, we say loud and clear, ‘Not in our Name’ and ‘Never again means never again for anyone.’”

Wieland Hoban, Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East/Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost, Germany

“As the unprecedented horror in Palestine continues to unfold, the global solidarity movement has reached an equally unprecedented intensity. This activism is more important than it’s ever been, and that context makes it especially timely for a group that has existed in a digital diaspora for four years to finally meet in person. While the possibilities for online communication and coordination have enabled countless actions that would have been impossible not so long ago, gathering in one place is always a different experience that stimulates different forms of exchange and creativity, and these are more urgently needed than ever.

The situation for Palestine solidarity activists, Jewish and otherwise, is different in each country, and in Germany the movement is faced with particularly repressive methods by the state as well as hostility in the political, cultural and academic mainstream. This makes it especially important to have allies, and it also puts German-based groups like Jüdische Stimme in a position to give other activists information that may help them to deal with their own challenges.”

Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices, Canada

“This gathering is enormously significant. IJCJP represents the flourishing Jewish opposition to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. We are challenging the moral certainty of those legacy Jewish organizations whose policies and utterances represent unmistakable complicity with Israel’s actions. We call on our fellow Jews around the world to courageously break ranks, embrace Jewish  traditions of social justice, and stand up for Palestinian human rights.”

Leah Levane, Jewish Voice for Labour UK

“It is crucial that we link with Jewish organisations across the world and stand up in opposition to the genocide being committed in Gaza, the brutal occupation in the West Bank and the decades long dispossession of Palestinians from their land and, indeed, their human rights. Throughout the world, Jewish people are warmly welcomed to the protests in support of Palestinians, not least in London.  Being part of this international network means we can learn from each other, exploring the similarities as well as the differences we face in our very different circumstances.  After more than four years of meeting via zoom, I am looking forward to meeting in person but when we originally planned this congress, we could not imagine that it would be while Israel seems bent on destroying Gaza – actions which Israel claims is to protect us as Jews; nothing could be further from the truth.”

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

1. IJCJP  ORGANIZATIONS

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa NZ – Sh’ma Koleinu (Aotearoa/New Zealand)

Another Jewish Voice /Een Andere Joodse Stem (Belgium)

Boycott From Within/Israeli Citizens for BDS (Israel)

French Jewish Peace Union/Union Juive Francaise Pour La Paix (France)

Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)

Independent Australian Jewish Voices (Australia)

Jewish Call for Peace (Luxembourg)

Jewish Network for Palestine (UK)

Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East/Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost(Germany)

Jewish Voice for Labour (UK)

Jewish Voice for Just Peace – (Ireland)

Jewish Voice for Peace (USA)

Jews Against the Occupation (Australia)

Jews Say No! (USA)

South African Jews for a Free Palestine (South Africa)

Tzedek Collective Sydney – (Australia)

Erev Rav – (Netherlands)

Associació Catalana de Jueus i Palestins – JUNTS (acjp.cat) – Spain (Catalan)

Tsedek! Collectif Juif Decolonial (France)

Coletivo Vozes Judaicas por Libertação (@vozesjudaicasporlibertacao) • Instagram photos and videos  (Brazil)

2. IJCJP MISSION STATEMENT  (February, 2021)

We are Jews from diverse countries, part of local, national, international networks and organizations. We are connected by our involvement in the struggle for Palestinian rights, and by our determination to work for justice. We oppose Zionism and all forms of racism. We came together to share our experiences of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. Although it claims to protect Jews, the IHRA Working Definition is in fact being used to shield Israel from valid political challenge, silence Palestinians, and suppress any mention of Palestinian rights. The IHRA’s weaponization of antisemitism sets a dangerous precedent for limiting speech on many issues. We take this as our immediate priority, but it is only a starting point for our collective commitment to build a more just world.  

3. IJCJP SPOKESPEOPLE

Marilyn Garson, Alternative Jewish Voices, Aotearoa (New Zealand), lived and worked in Gaza 2011 – 2015. She was a member of UNRWA’s emergency response team through the 2014 war. Returning to New Zealand, she wrote Still Lives, a memoir of her years in Gaza. She co-founded Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) with Fred Albert in 2020. AJV preserves Jewish pluralism, because there have always been many ways to be a Jew. AJV regards antiracism as a shared task, including antisemitism. And AJV works alongside Palestinian partners who seek freedom and justice based on international legal principles and our equal human rights.

Wieland Hoban, Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East/Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden, Nahost, Germany, is a composer and academic translator in the fields of philosophy, art, music, and literature as well as an author of academic and journalistic articles. He is chairman of Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which he represents both in IJCJP and EJJP ( European Jews for a Just Peace).

Leah Levane, Jewish voice for Labour, UK, is a retired Community Development Worker and Town Centre Manager.  She served as an elected member of  Hastings Borough Council in southeast England from 2018 to 2021.  She is co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour and heads up its antiracism work. In 2012 she spent three months in the South Hebron Hills as a Human Rights Witness and accompanier providing protective presence. Khirbet Zanuta, one of the hamlets that she supported then has been emptied as settler attacks post October 7th became intolerable.  In 2017 she participated in the largest ever Jewish delegation to Palestine (with Centre for Jewish Non Violence) spending time with a community in Silwan, East Jerusalem and revisiting the South Hebron Hills. Leah’s story is one of those featured in JVL’s “Jewish Journeys from Zionism” series. 

Sheryl Nestel, Independent Jewish Voices, Canada, holds a PhD from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where she taught sociology and equity studies from 2000-2012 and was the coordinator of the Office of Teaching Support. She is the author of numerous refereed journal articles, book chapters and reports on race and racism in the health professions and the author of Obstructed Labour:  Race and Gender in the Re-emergence of Midwifery (UBC Press, 2007), winner of the Canadian Women’s Studies Annual Book Prize for 2007. She recently completed a ground- breaking research project, Unveilling the Chilly Climate: The Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Canada written with Rowan Gaudet, which surveys the impact of harassment, intimidation and the suppression of speech on Palestine on faculty, students and activists in Canada. She serves on the steering committees of the Jewish Faculty Network and the International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine. She is an Affiliated Scholar at New College, University of Toronto. 

NCWNZ supports partnership to raise money to help women in Gaza

https://www.ncwnz.org.nz/fundraiser_for_gaza
May 17, 2024

Te Kaunihera Wāhine o Aotearoa National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) has joined in an Aotearoa intercommunity partnership – which includes Alternative Jewish Voices, the Federation of Islamic Associations (FIANZ), and Palestinian-led advocacy group Justice for Palestine – to recognise and respond to the escalating needs of women in Gaza.

“The hunger and famine in Gaza are unprecedented and horrifying. Working alongside one another is the strongest way we can support the women and children who are so disproportionately affected. So, as the conflict in Gaza passes the six-month mark, we are joining the voices of the partnership in asking for your help,” NCWNZ President Dr Suzanne Manning said.

Laura Agel from Justice for Palestine added, “We stand with NCWNZ in recognising and responding to the escalating needs of women in Gaza. The hunger and violence they face is horrifying. We at Justice for Palestine urge everyone to do what they can to help and support the women and children who are disproportionately affected by this humanitarian crisis.”

Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices, agreed. “Just as health workers and journalists have organised to draw attention to the devastating toll on their Gazan counterparts, we are so glad to see the National Council of Women responding to the dire needs of women and children this way.”

There is global evidence showing the disproportionate effects on women and children, including:

• The latest statistics from 15 May show that at least 35,233 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, the majority of these are women and children.
• The UN body dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, UN WOMEN, notes that among those killed are an estimated 6,000 women who left 19,000 children behind. Women who have survived have been displaced, widowed and are facing starvation. More than 1 million women and girls in Gaza have almost no food, no access to safe water, latrines, washrooms, or sanitary pads, with diseases spreading amid inhumane living conditions.
• Tufts University World Peace Foundation reports ”a ‘great’ famine, with 100,000 or more excess deaths, may be in prospect if the current level of hostilities and destruction continues.”

Dr Manning is urging New Zealanders to act. “We can raise money to help women and children who are disproportionately affected. It is easy to feel helpless being so far away but there is a very practical step that New Zealanders can take to help those most affected. We are asking supporters to donate to FIANZ’s Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Palestine Appeal Account: 02-0500-0737236-006.

“This will make a real difference and we need your help,” Dr Manning said. “Throughout history, women have worked together, and we are asking you to continue to do so today. We must continue to show solidarity and share our strength with those women and children affected by this humanitarian crisis now and for future generations.”

FIANZ Chairperson, Abdur Razzaq also acknowledged the partnership and its aims. “FIANZ is grateful for the help of the National Council of Women and Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa for their support to raise funds for humanitarian aid for Gaza, particularly the women, children and the elderly who are suffering from starvation.”

For more information, or to interview Dr Suzanne Manning please contact 022 655 6512 or email us.

(Remarks to Student Justice for Palestine teach-in at Vic Uni, Nakba Day 2024)

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa

Ko Hūrae te whakapaparanga mai

I tipu ake ahau i Canada i te whenua o Mi’kmaq 

Ināianei, e noho ana ahau i Te Whanganui-a-Tara

I whakakaupapa māua ko Fred Albert i te rōpū Alternative Jewish Voices

Ko Marilyn Garson taku ingoa

Thank you for inviting me to speak, and to every Palestinian person here, I wish some kind of safety for your family. I wish you quiet, peace and real justice soon, in our time.

What does Nakba mean to anti-Zionist Aotearoa Jews like me?

75 years ago, some of my antecedents took the homes of Palestinians. Some of my antecedents were seeking safety from genocide while others were capitalising on it. But Jewish suffering is not resolved by replicating the exclusion, violence, dispossession, erasure.

Nakba Day reminds me that my history was and is still used to rationalise Palestinian Nakba. Nakba is a day for storytelling and I listen without defensiveness while Palestinians tell me what that has meant and continues to mean.

Nakba is a day to feel the reverberations of the intergenerational trauma that we carry in our bodies leading to and from 1948. Also we feel the trauma dug into the land itself when that land is colonised, stolen, soaked in Indigenous blood and sadness. Nakba is also a day to understand Aotearoa and our long project of decolonisation.

As an anti-Zionist Jew, I (and my co-founder Fred Albert) also regard the violent creation of Israel as a self-inflicted disaster. It repudiates many of our texts and the intentions of the prophets. Zionism reduced our religious imagination to a plot of land and reduced our eternal vision to an exploitative project of power over others. It traded our thousands of years of study and worship for what, a culture like the other cultures. Nakba is the day when some of our antecedents gave religion away to become landlords like all the other landlords. And it was a terrible milestone on the road to doing genocide.

Nakba is our day to remember that disavowing is not enough. We are still implicated in Israel’s structures of power and violence. I am involved, obligated in the present tense. I was raised on the story and its benefits are offered to me. Israel writes for me a so-called law of return while Palestinians have not realised their UN-mandated right to return.

When I lived in Gaza, I did not see enmity in my colleagues’ eyes. I saw the future. I saw them crafting explanations for the bombardments to prevent their small children from living lives blighted by hatred. What on earth can Gazan parents say today? I saw all the anger I would feel at the Zionist project which classified my colleagues’ lives ethnically, deprived their children and separated their families, stunted and shortened their lives. What must they feel today? So Nakba is a day to feel all my discomfort as I listen and continue to unwrap the training that enlisted me in the project of their deprivation.

This year, this Nakba Day we are all Palestinian and we are all holding back our despair. As a Jew I belong in those streets, those canyons of rubble. I walk with the homeless, I weep with the bereaved and I wish I could comfort every motherless child. If I hope to live in peace and justice with Palestine tomorrow, I must walk each step with Palestinians to get there.

Nakba is being done again, still. This Nakba is a day for Jews of conscience to recommit to return, restoration, reparation and justice.

Nakba is just one day. Together we all commit to the daily, steady work of making this stop and sowing the seeds of real justice. If this is your first act of solidarity, please don’t let it be your last.

B’Tzedek

Marilyn Garson for Alternative Jewish Voices of Atoearoa

May 15, 2024

Would you like to live in a country that looks like Israel, segmented by endless kilometres of walls, watchtowers, cameras and checkpoints to divide its citizens; with an army as its chief unifying institution and military-grade weapons carried by its dominant ethnicity in the streets; ghettoes and mass graves at its edges?

Would you like to live in a democracy like Israel, preventing half of those over whom it wields power from voting while the fascists compete with fundamentalists for the sizeable psychopath vote?

Would you like to make your fortune in a securitised economy like Israel’s, marketing the technologies of population surveillance, separation and containment; testing its weapons on trapped human beings?

Would you like the power to signal like Israel, to invent allegations while knowing that you won’t be asked for evidence? Such signals they send – Hamas headquarters, UNRWA neutrality, minimise civilian casualties – while the world’s most moral army rolls over human rights and civilian protection.

Would you like to live in a world that operates like Israel, a world of states that shop for their police and call the preservation of apartheid self-defence – all with one eye on their own inconvenient populations and the other eye on thoses hordes at the doorstep?

We already inhabit a world that complicit. Glissando, Zionism has slid us from being consumers of Jewish supremacy to enablers of genocide. If you doubt that, try reversing the ethnic roles in the news.

Imagine reading that Jewish-Israeli babies were deprived of oxygen for their incubators or Jewish-Israeli children were deprived of anaesthetics for amputations, or that the bodies of Jewish doctors with bound hands were being lifted from mass graves still wearing their scrubs. Imagine that Palestinians were at the same time circulating offers to purchase Israel’s beachfront property now that the houses had all been blown up. Imagine your preferred media outlet uncritically rebroadcasting statements that Jews are less than human, or that calling Jews animals insults animals, or that there are no innocent Jews. Would you sit quietly while two million Jews were penned up behind a wall and deprived of food for six months?

This onslaught is unthinkable unless the objects of the violence are Palestinian. That measures the success of Zionism’s radical dehumanisation. Even as Israel’s most loathsome settler thugs entered Cabinet, our own government acknowledged only a deterioration; not a disaster.

Genocide is always this numbing gradation of violence. Glissando – we are arming, trading, normalising; we are invested in genocide.

Netanyahu has spent years positioning Israel at the brazen, profitable edge of a White supremacist, anti-democratic, securitised new regime of power. Zionism was wrapped up in Jewishness to give it cover. Now, in Gaza we see its real outlines.

We are concerned for our Jewish community. Netanyahu and his cohort have seeded confusion about the boundaries of Judaism, Zionism, and antisemitism. They have made all Jews vulnerable to the anger provoked by Israel’s actions. Damn them. Some Jews fear their friends because they have been told so often that protest stems from hatred and constitutes a local threat. They are wrong.

The manipulation of antisemitism is not a reason to stand back and let the slaughter continue. It is a reason to keep educating while we try together to save lives. Genocide is continuing unchecked, and we must make that stop.

Just look at the movement spreading on campuses and in Aotearoa: Jews arm in arm with Palestinians, tangata whenua, labour unions, human rights activists, health workers and angry young people. Do we evince fear of the people next to us? No, we protest because we fear a world that acts like Israel: scholasticide, econocide, domicide, genocide.

What do we want? Ceasefire. Stop doing business as usual with a genocidal regime.

When do we want it? Right now. Today.

Marilyn Garson and Fred Albert

To our Palestinian friends and our allies in the mahi tahi,

This night is not like all the other nights. We gather for our Passover meals while your people are being starved in our names. How can we speak while this unthinkable crime is ongoing?

The holiday of Passover commemorates Jewish liberation. It is not enough that we were freed from oppression. We are feeling our rage and finding our place to act against the oppression of any people by another.

We are instructed to retell the story of our liberation, and we will.

75 years ago, some of our antecedents took the homes of yours. Some were seeking shelter from a cataclysm while others were capitalising on it. We regard every survivor with compassion. The echoes of their traumas live on within both of our peoples.

Our cataclysm was exploited to justify your Nakba. We listen without defensiveness while you tell us what that has meant. Until we address that with restoration, reparation and return, your catastrophe will live in the present tense.

Since then a bitter, violent disparity of power and consequence has prevailed from the river to the sea. We call for our people to surrender their power, to elevate and centre your justice.

The Zionist project of displacement and erasure is finding its fullest expression this year. We see desolation, starvation and terror inflicted upon your families in our names. Our tears and our horror are boundless, but tears are no help without actions. We will not rest until every person who is cold and hungry finds food, safety, home and comfort. Even then, we will not turn away until the quiet of ceasefire is followed by the real peace of justice. That will be the hour of your and our liberation.

What does it mean to be pro-Jewish anti-Zionist this year? It means directing our outrage into action: being seen and heard in solidarity, protesting the brutality and the appropriation of our good name. To be pro-Jewish means digging beneath the travesty of Zionism, unearthing thousands of years of Jewishness and bringing that into the light.

It means establishing a Jewish community where all are welcome and no one is harmed – an Aotearoa Tangata Tiriti Jewish community that is part of the long work of liberation. We are not safe while others are targeted; we are not valued by devaluing others.

Trauma is resolved with acceptance and belonging. May we find resolution together in time.

That is the lesson we take from our Passover festival of liberation: we reject the oppression of one people by another.

Soon, in our time, may we be all be free.

Alternative Jewish Voices – Dayenu

Why did a German bank close the Jewish Voice account?

Media release: March 28, 2024

Jewish groups from 14 countries are outraged that the Berliner Sparkasse bank has frozen the account of Jüdische Stimme (Jewish Voice) until the organisation submits documents including the full names and addresses of its members.

‘The Berliner Sparkasse is a public corporation, operating in a state whose citizens are free to associate and engage in politics. Their request is an act of intimidation,’ says Wieland Hoban, chairman of Jüdische Stimme. ‘Jüdische Stimme / Jewish Voice is assisting the organisers of the Palestine Congress, which will take place in Berlin in mid-April. The closer the congress gets, the more intense the persecution becomes; for weeks, there has been shrill defamation from the tabloid media and local politicians, such as describing it as a “hate summit” for which “thousands of anti-Semites” will be coming to Berlin. Because the journalists can’t write anything factual about it, they try to delegitimise the congress through guilt by association.’

In country after country, Palestinians, Jews and others who protest Israel’s devastation of Gaza are being called antisemitic for upholding Palestinians’ human and collective rights.

The International Jewish Collective for Justice in Palestine (IJCJP) is a grouping of Jewish organisations in 14 countries. Jüdische Stimme is a founding member. IJCJP members educate their communities to distinguish real antisemitism from its weaponisation to shield Israel from protest and accountability. The political use of antisemitism is enabled by a definition which conflates anti-Zionism and the hatred of Jews or Judaism. One of the definition’s drafters has testified to US Congress that it is being used with ‘“the subtlety of a mallet” to stigmatise and stifle criticism of Israel.’

We, the member groups of the IJCJP, are appalled that German Jews  are being called antisemitic for upholding the rights and laws on which the world agreed after the Holocaust, so as to prevent further genocide. Judische Stimme’s membership includes the descendants of Holocaust survivors determined to be personally faithful to their commitment ‘never again’.

Right now, Israel stands charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice. For a German bank to confiscate Jewish funds from a mission to save lives is a new low in the long effort to silence Palestinian, anti-Zionist and pro-human rights voices.

It is unthinkable that German banks should presume to define the terms of Jewish involvement in public life. Restore the account and think again: which side of history is Germany on this time?

Contact: Donna Nevel, globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

END

We, Alternative Jewish Voices – Dayenu, renew our call for our government to recognise the State of Palestine. Do it now, today.

Recognition is integral to arresting and responding to the genocidal violence we are watching on our screens.

We are sick of seeing states (led by the US and followed by Aotearoa among others) respond to this horror with apolitical tokens of aid. Governments including ours are (under-)reacting to a manufactured humanitarian cataclysm without a squeak about its structural cause or solution. Over and over.

• America is air-dropping 38,000 meals into Gaza. If all goes very well, one-tenth of the Gazans who are starving in the north might have one meal – and we hope it does go very well. But why is Biden not objecting to Israel’s obstruction of an aid shipment at its port of Ashdod – a shipment that would feed 1.1 million people for a month? Neither the US nor New Zealand is speaking about the cause of this need: Israel is using starvation as a tool of war, and that is a war crime.
• West Bank settlers (whose settlements NZ acknowledge as illegal) are plundering and ethnically clearing villages. Over 400 West Bankers have been killed and 7000 detained since October 7. NZ has told a dozen settlers that they can’t come to Queenstown in response. The Israeli occupation forces that accompany settlers on their crime sprees and detain Palestinians are untouched. NZ has not acted or even spoken about the cause of these casualties: illegal settlement by fanatics who wield unprecedented power in Israel’s coalition government.
• 30,400 Gazans have been killed and NZ would like a ceasefire, please, for humanitarian reasons (which are desperately real and urgent). Our government has not acted against the makers of this repugnant strategy and it has not spoken about the cause of this violence: Palestinians have a right to self-determination and Israel has obstructed it for 75 years.

In a world of such diplomatic acquiescence, who speaks for Palestine? Who envisions the new Gaza and protects West Bankers as parts of a single future, who will see to Palestine’s interests in its own resources (from the water under its ground to the natural gas off its shores)? Who determines the shape and administration of Palestine? These are not decisions for Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu to make. Nor has their agent, the Palestine Authority, any national mandate.

NZ fails to imagine a national Palestinian voice. NZ is among the minority of countries that do not recognise the State of Palestine and grant Palestinians their own voice as of right in all such conversations.

There is a Palestine-shaped hole in Aotearoa’s response to this season of genocidal violence. Statehood is a sine qua non of survival in this state-led world. In a world of states, stateless people are unprotected and their interests do not figure except as it suits the transactional whims of states.

Palestine – in particular Gaza – has been a little rip in the fabric of states for decades. This is a bitter irony that every Jew and every supporter of Israel should be made to confront and grapple with: the vulnerability of statelessness was also the problem statement of Zionism.

Zionism responded to the threatened status of Jews who had been denied the rights and protection of their states. In a world organised by states in the interests of state power, anything could be done to a stateless, dehumanised and unprotected people. Jews knew that statelessness was a precursor of violent erasure yet, watching Palestinians endure the same vulnerability, too many Jews have turned amnesiac.

We write while genocide is being done and watched. It is the lowest and the defining moment of this issue in our lifetimes. Parts of our understanding of the world have failed and broken because we did not believe that so many institutions and governments would stand back and watch suffering like this.

Broken or not, this catastrophe will need to be addressed in a world of states’ interests and neighbours’ indifference. Palestinians have every right to find their own national voice and call on Aotearoa as an equal collective with equal rights to defense, resource sovereignty and territorial integrity as per UN resolutions. Recognition says clearly that the IDF, West Bank settlers and those displacing families in Occupied East Jerusalem are operating on Palestinian land. Recognition rejects Israel’s efforts to invalidate UN resolutions with violent facts on the ground.

We are tired of hearing that there is nothing Aotearoa can do about justice from this distance. Recognition is the thing our government can do, and doing it will bring Aotearoa in line with the majority of the world’s states.

So we are renewing our call for the government of Aotearoa to recognise its fellow State of Palestine. Now, today. We call on Foreign Minister Peters to put some actions in place to support the call for a ceasefire. Send Israel’s ambassador home until normalcy on the ground permits normal diplomatic relations.

It’s time to name the nation that will not be erased, and elevate its voice to the centre of our concern: the State of Palestine.

Alternative Jewish Voices ~ Dayenu

Friends, please take a moment to meet Ilan, a member of AJV – Dayenu, and hear his testimony about serving in the IDF.

We have deep respect for him for speaking up.

[The tallis is a fringed Jewish prayer shawl, usually woven from silk, wool or linen. Not every Jew chooses to wear a tallis and Jewishness is plural. We respect the choices of our fellow Jews, be they religious or secular.]

My father kept his silk tallis in its velvet bag, in a drawer of the telephone table in our hallway. He would pick it up on his way out the back door whenever the synagogue was short of its quorum for prayer. He would not have dreamed of taking the tallis out of its bag before he arrived at the sanctuary doors.

I have never worn my tallis in public either, because prayer is such a private and separate event.

However, throughout Israel’s campaign to shatter Gaza, the tallis has been on display as never before. Rabbis have blocked bridges, railway stations and the Congressional rotunda. They have been arrested while wearing their tallis and reciting prayers. They have set the symbols of Jewishness against the powers that fund and permit genocide.

Now those spiritual leaders are rabbis to us all. Bring it, they are urging us. Bring everything we have and place it visibly in the service of justice and peace. Throw all of our Jewishness against the ethno-nationalism that props up the walls around Gaza and hardens the walls around too many hearts.

Last weekend Dayenu and Alternative Jewish Voices members did just that. We welcomed and farewelled the Sabbath at Israel’s consular offices in Auckland and Wellington. We prayed for an end to this genocidal madness.

We stepped from pedestrian into sacred space by preparing to put on the tallis. We said a short reflection and then the prayer for being wrapped in this deeply personal garment. The prayer is whispered within the tent of the tallis itself. Then, solemn and a bit self-conscious, we settled the prayer shawls on our shoulders and looked out at the friends gathered around us. We conducted short services of prayer and song on the sidewalk.

In Wellington, I asked the group to think of my colleague’s grandchild, just born in a tent in Rafah. Her family named her Salaam – peace. We sang so that Salaam might hear Jewish voices raised for peace, for justice, for a life with her – not at her expense.

In our small groups on the street, we wore the tallis to bring Jewishness more fully to our solidarity. Jewish solidarity with Palestinians requires us to confront our responsibility as well as our own trauma – and after all that it requires us to choose the risks of peace rather than the risks of war.

Jewish solidarity is thus not an act of self-abasement but of a fuller participation in our world. We have been raised in the harms of Zionism and we can be agents of change. Our responsibility is not self-hating, it is adult and repairing.

People are familiar with Hillel’s 2000-year-old injunction, If I am only for me, then who am I? Jewish solidarity replies by being for each other.

Relational Jewish philosophy or theologies like Martin Buber’s say that Gd is present in the space between fully present equals. We recently read a Torah portion in which Gd situates Gd’s voice in the space between two winged carvings.

Solidarity happens in that space between us when we stand together, look straight at each other and imagine in each others’ eyes a land beyond war – from the river to the sea.

In both Auckland and Wellington, our prayer services were joined by non-Jews. Thank you: it felt so good to be surrounded by friends. Being Jewish in public while the White Right is mainstreaming anti-semitism is not risk-free, but as with any form of racism or threat, we face it together. We face it knowing that others will stand with us because we stand with them.

I wear my tallis to say privately hineini – ­I am here. I wore it in public to append the fuller meaning, hineini – and I am ready. I am ready to enact a Judaism beyond Zionism in a world where we thrive in our mutual bonds.

Marilyn Garson