Author: Marilyn Garson

The world’s major news outlets now carry video of Israeli soldiers raping prisoners, kicking bodies off rooftops, decimating Gaza’s centres of learning and culture, and bombing humanitarian ‘safe’ spaces. Israeli government ministers do not hide their desire to starve civilians. Lebanon reels from thousands of bomblets set to explode indiscriminately in civilian homes and shops. In January, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘plausibly’ genocidal. In July, the highest court in the United Nations system declared Israel’s presence in occupied Palestine unlawful and instructed governments to act—together and individually—to bring this illegal occupation to an end ‘as rapidly as possible’.

People, particularly young people, and a growing number of states are refusing the world that Israel’s conduct shows them: a world entirely without civilian protections, where power does whatever comes into its warmongering head. A world where nothing is safe. This week 124 UN member states, including Aotearoa, chose the law over that abysmal vision. They voted to require Israel to leave the territories where its presence is unlawful.

Four pro-occupation responses to the UN vote show us what has and has not changed at the Zionist intersection of Aotearoa. A statement of 65 Christian church ministers reminds us that most Zionists are Christian. These church ministers ‘support the right of the Jewish State of Israel to protect its homeland’, without according any rights to Palestinians. Their stance explicitly contradicts the ICJ’s opinion that Israel’s self-declared security ambitions do not justify its illegal actions.

Explaining Aotearoa’s vote to uphold that ICJ opinion, Foreign Minister Winston Peters declared, ‘That advisory opinion aligns with New Zealand’s long-standing view that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful.’

The Israel Institute, a majority-Christian business entity, knows better. They claim that we and 124 UN member states are practising ‘diplomatic terrorism’.

The ‘Indigenous Embassy’, led by a Christian former director of the Israel Institute (and partner of a current director) is racially incendiary. It condemns the United Nations’ ‘expulsion of the Jewish people’, an evocative and wholly inappropriate phrase. Rather than upholding international law and the right of Indigenous Palestinians to self-determination, the statement claims that the UN is ‘affirming Islamic imperialism’.

The Christian statements strain to imagine Israel’s occupation as a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims. It is not religious; it never was. We must not allow people like this to make it so.

After the firestarters, it’s almost nostalgic to read the NZ Jewish Council recycle its retro claims to other people’s land in terms that have not changed since the 1970s.

The NZ Jewish Council worries that nothing is required of Palestinians in exchange for upholding the law. They fret that telling Israel to remove its army, settlers and settlements from illegally occupied Palestine ‘removes any incentive for Palestinians to negotiate, end violence and seek peace’.

They either haven’t read, or they haven’t understood the ICJ. Illegal occupation is not an incentive. When your home is invaded, you are not required to negotiate with the invaders to kindly let you have the use of the garden shed.

The ICJ, and this action to uphold it, are not a negotiating ploy. Israel’s occupation needs to end. Its genocidal violence on illegally occupied land needs to end. That is not the end goal; it is the starting point. Withdrawal will not constitute peace; it constitutes the first step.

Then come the hard questions of a just co-existence. The hard questions follow—they do not precede—the cessation of Israel’s unlawful acts of occupation, apartheid, and withholding of Palestinian self-determination. When those have ended, two self-determining parties will face the future questions.

Times and technologies have changed. At last, belatedly, the instrument of law is being applied and 124 UN member states—including ours—are calling for it to be observed. Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian space is unlawful and that illegality must end.

Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa

Media release

September 10, 2024

Aotearoa’s Jewish groups ask, “How many flashing lights does it take for our government to notice?”

Members of Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu fear that our government is heightening Muslim vulnerability.

“Government actions are actively exposing Muslim New Zealanders—among others—to risk and danger,” says Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices.  “Aotearoa failed its Muslim citizens once, with shattering consequences. People warned government and agencies of impending danger in 2019. They were not heard. This government is setting up another avoidable failure, and we join our Muslim whānau in calling for something better.”

Under Judith Collins, the coordinating minister, the government has abandoned major recommendations of the enquiry into the Christchurch murders. There will be no further wraparound support services for those who survived and those who lost whānau.

A speaking tour by Candace Owens of the American far right has been advertised. The Christchurch shooter claimed that Owens ‘influenced [him] above all.’ While antisemitism and Holocaust denial are her levers, her product is division, confusion and hate. Aotearoa has enough of those, without issuing invitations for more.

Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee—a former gun lobbyist now in charge of the guns—is rushing to pare back gun regulations without public consultation, without time to assess the impact on public safety, and without involving her public service advisors in case they tell her the obvious. The police association, also denied their input, has called for the portfolio to be taken from her.

Muslim schools in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland were closed yesterday because of threats. An emailed video displayed a shooter. How re-traumatising that must be.

“The temperature is rising,” warns Fred Albert, Alternative Jewish Voices co-founder. “The government is just letting it rise. Warning lights are flashing and we need government to notice. They’re asleep when we need action to protect vulnerable communities—and to limit unnecessary firearms.”

Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu send arohanui to our Muslim neighbours and we join them in demanding vision and action from our institutions of politics, security and civil society.

Background information supporting this media release

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of anti-Zionist Jews, working on Jewish pluralism, antiracism and justice for Palestine. Dayenu is a group of New Zealand Jews opposed to racism and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. More information can be found at https://ajv.org.nz/ and https://www.instagram.com/dayenunz/

End

For enquiries, please write to contact@ajv.org.nz

Media release

August 7, 2024

Jewish Groups Call on the NZ Jewish Council to Withdraw its Misleading Survey of Antisemitism

Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu are calling on the NZ Jewish Council to withdraw its 2021 national survey of antisemitism. It alleges that 63% of New Zealanders hold at least one antisemitic attitude. However, fully one-third of the attitudes it calls antisemitic are simply agreements with the finding of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal.

Alternative Jewish Voices (AJV) co-founder Fred Albert explains, “The survey was always misleading. New Zealanders who knew ethically what the ICJ has ruled legally have been called antisemitic. 21% of respondents understood, as the ICJ has ruled, that Israel’s regime is apartheid. 20% knew that Israel’s occupation is not democratic, and so on. Half a dozen of the questions elicited replies consistent with the findings of the United Nations’ highest court. It is slanderous to call those respondents antisemitic. It grossly distorts our understanding of real antisemitism.”

AJV filed an Official Information Act request to parse the Jewish Council’s funding submission claim that it had “widespread Jewish community support, across multiple organisations.” Documents show a small number of interrelated and majority-Christian Zionist entities (whose directors overlap with the Taxpayers’ and Free Speech Unions) manufactured the appearance of Jewish community consent. The Ministry of Ethnic Communities gave $15,000 for a survey which AJV’s co-founder Marilyn Garson calls “an exercise in misdirection.”

She continues, “It tells the Jewish community, government, and all of New Zealand to look away from the very real threats that emerge mostly from the far right and its networks of disinformation. We’re being told to condemn protest instead—protest that is entirely consistent with the ICJ ruling. This survey divides us. Take it off the table. It’s time for all these false accusations to end. We need to be standing together now: Jews, Muslims, Tangata Whenua and tau iwi, faith and immigrant communities, Palestinians and all their allies. We need to be demanding action on the ICJ ruling and we need to be working together against racism.”

Background information supporting this media release

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of anti-Zionist Jews. It stands for Jewish pluralism, antiracism and it supports Palestinians in the pursuit of justice. Dayenu is a group of New Zealand Jews opposed to racism and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. AJV and Dayenu are in the process of merging. More information can be found at https://ajv.org.nz/ and https://www.instagram.com/dayenunz/

The NZ Jewish Council calls itself the representative body of Aotearoa’s Jewish community. It is neither elected by, nor accountable to, the community and it chooses not to represent the community’s breadth.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) released a decision on 19 July 2024, after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2022 asking the ICJ for an advisory opinion about the legal consequences from Israel’s ongoing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination from Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian Occupied Territories  since 1967, the legal status of Israel’s occupation, and the legal consequences for other States and the UN. This case is separate from South Africa’s case to the ICJ alleging that Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza. More information can be found here: https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186

ENDS

For further information, please contact

Marilyn Garson, contact@ajv.org.nz

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

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