Here are two very different paths from Zionism to last week’s (very successful!) fundraiser at the Olive Branch in Carterton. First, Rick Sahar’s story:

Growing up in Detroit as the son of two Holocaust survivors, my parents never spoke about their lives, before or during the Holocaust, so I knew very little about them while growing up. I will explain more about this later…

When I was sixteen years old, I had enough of the tensions I felt at home. I was also fed-up with high school, and for political and social justice reasons, I did not see a future for myself in the USA. My ideal at the time was to work in agriculture, to become a farmer. With that in mind, I convinced my parents to allow me to travel to Israel for the summer of 1971, not telling my parents that if it worked out for me, I was not planning to return for my last year of high school…

I arrived in Israel naive and uninformed. We never discussed Israel at home, I never discussed Israel with my friends. I ended up living there for 10 years. By the end of that time, I had witnessed the apartheid system in action and knew that I really couldn’t live in Israel anymore and had to leave…

Yes, and during that time, I was conscripted into the Israeli army in January 1974 and was trained as a tank gunner. Conscious objectors were treated like criminals at that time, and they still are. I did not go to the army happily as it got in the way of my work and my relationship. And I never held a gun in my hands before. Armed combat was beyond my understanding. I had no glorified view in the least of me being in the Israeli army… and fortunately, I never saw “live action” during any of my time in the Israeli army.

A few short months after the 1973 October “Yom Kippur” war, I was trained and stationed for 1.5 years in the Sinai Peninsula facing the Suez Canal just in case another war would break out, which it didn’t. I was just wanting to do my time, my three years, and get out and go back to my life on the kibbutz, thinking I will be living there for the rest of my life…

When finally back on the kibbutz, I realized that my personal relationships with Palestinian Arabs I had befriended caused issues for some of my comrades living there. They questioned me as to why I would invite “them” to the kibbutz… that baffled me at the time, still not knowing much of the history, how the Zionists drove Palestinians off their land or, or for that matter, how the Zionists had made a pact with Mussolini’s fascist party. The Zionists didn’t hesitate in killing Arab, British and Jews alike if they got in the way of their plans to create a “Jewish” state.

I joined a kibbutz-led left-wing peace movement that was light on policy and offered little solution to the situation, not yet called in Israel an “occupation”. In 1980, during what turned out to be my last reserve duty, I was stationed in the West Bank and called into my commander’s office; he ordered me to go with two other soldiers to arrest a suspected PLO operative at his home and bring him in. Without a moment’s pause, I flatly refused the order, saying that I was there to guard not to arrest on suspicion… I gladly accepted the commander’s punishment knowing that at least I would not be responsible for ruining someone’s life; I was sent to guard the ammunition bunker, around the clock, for the next three weeks. In those weeks, I came to the conclusion that I must never again serve in this army which meant that my time was up in Israel. So I took a year’s leave from the kibbutz and joined my Kiwi girlfriend on her trip back home to visit her mother in Wellington.

What was it like for me to come to Aotearoa/NZ at the end of 1981? It was like finding Paradise. I learned it was soon after a most divisive time in recent history, the Springbok tour and protests… Arriving in Auckland, the next day we went to Aotea Square, I was amazed… no sign of soldiers, armed with rifles, in sight. Instead we saw kappa haka groups and women singing and swinging poi… I actually cried tears of relief to find myself in such a peaceful environment compared to where I had been living, in a fully militarized state.

Both my partner and I took an interest in Buddhism. I chose to study Tibetan Buddhism as it weirdly reminded me of some Jewish orthodox rituals I went to growing up. Through meeting several Tibetan teachers who told me about China’s occupation, their monasteries being destroyed and their own dramatic escapes, I eventually became involved in the advocacy group “Friends of Tibet”… In time, I became the local chairperson, organizing rallies and vigils, mainly in front of the Chinese embassy. There was a Parliamentary lobby group that somewhat supported our demands for a free Tibet. Knowing that the Chinese president was to arrive for a state visit in 1999, we organized a rally outside the Hotel he was to stay at on Grey St. What happened there, in short, was that the NZ police unlawfully broke up our demonstration, forcing us away from the hotel protest site. We got legal advice from Barrister Tony Ellis who supported us in filing a complaint against the police for interfering in our legal right to protest. There was a Parliamentary inquiry that found in our favour, the Pro-Tibet demonstrators. The police then became keen for us to drop our complaint, end the court proceedings, so they offered a public apology and compensation to all who were illegally detained, which the group accepted. When I was asked by one of the local newspapers, why did we decide to file court proceedings against the NZ Police, my answer was “to preserve the legal right of protest in NZ from now, and into the future”. I’m glad I was part of that action as I believe it has secured our right to demonstrate in support of Palestine, on the streets of Wellington, including in front of the Israeli embassy.

What I realized just a few short years after that experience was how I have been avoiding looking into my own family’s history of oppression suffered under Nazism. I was finally ready to find out about my parents’ Holocaust experience that they never spoken about, and started researching it myself. I was unprepared for some of the facts I found out, yet it went on to influence me in ways I did not expect… 

I became obsessed; I searched through thousands of pages on the internet and pieced together the chronological life events of both my parents, how they were forced out of their homes to move into ghettos, later into concentration camps, members of their families murdered, just for being Jewish… sound familiar? I also learned about the events that led to them surviving and to arriving to Detroit and meeting there and getting married. A new start for two traumatized people… I realized that they might never have left Poland, with the happy lives they had there, if not for the Nazis’ cruel plan to rid themselves, and the world, of Jews…”Never again” should mean never again for all people.

I joined the Holocaust Centre of NZ (HCNZ) to continue my research and share my findings with other members of the Jewish community and the wider public. I started by presenting my Parents’ survival story first at HCNZ followed by presentations at several high schools/colleges around the country. I even became a board member. Zionists on the HCNZ board started focusing their support on Israel and justifying its military actions instead of fulfilling HCNZ’s mission statement to call out human rights’ violations as they happen. I resigned from the board disenchanted with the breakdown of process and procedure. HCNZ today does not acknowledge that a genocide is being perpetrated against the people of Gaza… For me, a son of Holocaust survivors, it is incredulous that the HCNZ does not acknowledge that a genocide is being perpetrated against the people of Gaza, even though it is recognized by the world’s leading genocide and Holocaust experts/academics and that a genocide is found by the world’s highest courts to be most likely being committed in Gaza.  

So with my family history, my growing personal awareness towards human rights and justice for all, learning the historical facts and that Zionism is a fascist movement, it became apparent to me what to do next… to commit my support for Palestinian Rights and Self-determination and do what I can to at least help raise public awareness about this Genocide in addition to Israel’s land theft and illegal occupation from also before 1948. There are still people in Wellington, and around this country and the world, who believe that Hamas started this genocide on Oct 7. Every leaflet I manage to hand out, on the streets of Wellington, I see as a small victory, in assisting to overcome ignorance that will help lead to a free Palestinian state.

Israel has always made false claims they are being threatened by another state in order to attack them… Israel cannot claim the right of self-defense as an occupying force when attacked by an armed group within a territory they illegally occupy. Their claims have no legal standing in international law…

I firmly believe that ending this Genocide and establishing Palestinian statehood are the most significant human rights actions of our time. Many people living in New Zealand took a stand against the Springbok Tour and the apartheid in South Africa. The whole world should be rising up against Israel as they are the present-day Nazis. I don’t say that lightly knowing the huge amount of suffering perpetrated by the Nazis, yet I’m convinced that to be true. If you agree with me, even in part, then this is the moment to dedicate more of your time and effort to raise awareness of the Genocide in Gaza through whatever means you can – attending rallies, sharing your views with friends and family, writing to the government to sanction Israel and expel the ambassador, boycotting all goods manufactured in Israel and also those companies that support the Genocide. We can all become better informed so that we can understand more deeply the significance for us all the way over here in NZ for being much more involved in supporting Palestinian statehood. Every experience I have had in my life has led me to that realization.

I’ve tried to create a picture of how I overcame my lack of knowledge to become involved in Palestinian rights and in supporting a free Palestine… There is real truth behind the words, “nobody is free until Palestine is free”. If only Israelis thought the same, they too would finally become free.

I see this time we are sharing as significant – we all live entitled lives with the ability of some self-determination, to a greater or lesser extent. With understanding that, it is our responsibility to act.

By Rick Sahar

And a very different path, by Marilyn Garson

Kia ora koutou, kia ora i te whānau.

Thank you so much for this lovely reason to get out of the city on a beautiful weekend morning.

Ten years ago, I spent my bright weekend mornings reclining on the terrace of the Al Deirah Hotel in Gaza City with my closest Palestinians colleagues and some of their small children. We had breakfast together, overlooking the beach, on each of the last weekends of my four years in Gaza.

Those were quintessential Gaza mornings. Everyone moved more slowly in the mornings. Scorching salt air; fishing boats put-putting into the lagoon. Table covered with plates of food to share. Now and then, like a magnet our eyes would be drawn to the stretch of beach where an Israeli soldier had killed those four skinny boys while they played, one year earlier. July 16, 2014. That beach reminded us that Gaza lived in the pause between wars, and each hour brought the next war nearer. So we talked more slowly, because our rambling talk suspended the time. Gaza was all those things at once.

Israel’s occupation forces destroyed the Al Deirah Hotel in January, 2024. And now Israel’s forces say they will kill anyone who ventures into that cool, spacious water.

My friends who sat around that table have left Gaza now. They say that a part of them is dying from the news. Their children drag them forward. The baby who napped at our table recently told me that she reads chapter books in English in her new Zealand school.

My colleague Scott returned to Gaza in November, 2023. He was UNRWA’s director for the first 15 months of this nightmare. He saw Israel strike every one of UNRWA’s protected shelters at least once, and kill over 200 of our UNRWA colleagues. Scott has gone grey. We caught up after he left, and we talked about the dislocation of Gaza’s once-familiar landscape. The eye looks for landmarks as if the past could comfort the present. The building where we both worked is now a tangle of concrete and rebar. I have tried to locate my apartment building in video of the wreckage of Al Rashid Road but there aren’t enough streets left to count. Sand has begun to smooth over the rubble.

Little Gaza is the most heavily bombed place on this earth. The obliteration of so much of Gaza’s built environment scarcely hints at the wounds to its society. There is a pervasive sense of absence in the images, where there had been such lively bustle. Because Gazans had been crowded so closely together, Gaza’s city streets felt as intimate as village squares. We drove with a particular rhythm, forever tapping the brakes to nod at someone’s relatives, former neighbours, the parents of children’s school friends. As densely woven as Gaza’s connections had been, that thick is the web of Palestinians’ losses now.

I have not gotten used to it. Waking up each dawn, Gaza is still there until I open my eyes.

Here is something else that I learned and brought home from Gaza: steadfastness is relational. Every night when the electricity was cut, the first sound I heard was the cheering from the street. That defiance overpowered and elevated my frustration.

The foundations of resistance take shape in the space between us, where you encourage me and I am there for you. Since Israel set about shattering Gaza’s soul, since Gaza cracked and split this world, you and I have been fortifying those steadfast foundations.

Let me say clearly, I hate that illegal wall around Gaza because I am a Jew. I don’t give a damn who built the wall. That wall is an insult to the value of life, and I care for the lives being lived behind it. There is no question on which side of that wall a Jew belongs. We know about ghetto walls and we belong with those who rise up and fight to survive within them.

Since I left Gaza, I have worked for a just future for both Palestinians and Jews. Zionism is not allowed to steal Jewishness from the rest of us. It has been my privilege to be, among many others, working at the foundations of a new, liberatory, solidarist Jewishness; be it spiritual or secular. We recognise that the old structure has failed, failed utterly. Jewish institutions that claim to act in our name have twisted themselves into pretzels to invent exceptions to their principles and their mercy and the ethics of our teachings.

Does that sound familiar? I regard the Wairarapa flag-waving as the same kind of foundational act – living allyship steadily, together, keeping it visible and resolute. Enacting solidarity with one eye on the institutions that claim to represent us. Our national institutions have twisted themselves into pretzels to make exceptions to the treaties they have signed in our names. They have made Gaza into a jagged little hole in mercy and humanitarian law and the simple value of human life.

Each time we gather the streets or in front of this indifferent parliament of ours, we are working at the foundations of something better. We work for a world in which fairness and feeding children are not radical beliefs.

We work at these foundations, knowing that others around the world are doing the same thing. We are finding new communities of values.

In the same month that we formed AJV, February 2020, we were invited to join Global Jews for Palestine – GJP. Anti-Zionist Jewish groups from a dozen countries realised that Israel’s imperial project was rolling over us because we were each reacting in isolation. We were each scrambling to invent the wheel in our dozen countries. We worked on the foundations of global Jewish solidarity together for four and a half years online. Then we finally met last year in London. They all told me that I’m shorter in person than I look on Zoom. Now we have member groups in 21 countries, on six continents.

I want to be careful, because I would never say that we found opportunity in disaster. I would never reduce Palestinians’ suffering to our opportunity. Instead, I would say that Gaza broke the way that I understand our world. Now I place that suffering at the heart of my vision of the world we need, and my definition of my task as a friend and ally to Gaza.

Any ally jams her body, mind, speech and privilege like a spanner into the workings of race and violence. She refuses to normalise what should not be normal. She does not let others ignore what the structure is designed to hide.

Jewish solidarity also means embracing some discomfort because we are implicated in the systems that oppress Palestinians. It means listening while Palestinians explain what those systems have meant. As my friend Rick so clearly shows, it means being the walking proof that Jews are not threatened by others’ equal claims in this world. On the contrary, we are all threatened by a world in which genocidal violence can be met with silence and complicity.

But we must do more than protest. It is essential that anti-Zionist Judaism also lays the foundations of new Jewish community; community that does not replicate the harms we are witnessing in Palestine. So many institutions of the Jewish religion have handed themselves over to nationalism. Our future does not lie in asking for the marginal reform of any institution that defends one genocide in the name of another. Global Jews for Palestine has mapped our vision of an ethical and inclusive Jewish community in our global manifesto for collective liberation. It’s online, please sign in support.

The quality and durability of any building relies on its foundations. We are all working at the impatient foundations of a global movement now. Palestine will be free.

So much is needed between now and then, and so many days like today. I want to add my thanks to the organisers of this event, to our hosts and to everyone who is contributing toward the desperate, hourly needs of Gazan Palestinians.

And for everyone who waves those flags week after week? I wish sunshine and gentle breezes for you. For as long as fairness and dignity are radical, I belong with the flag-wavers.

By Marilyn Garson

Rick and Marilyn both want to thank the hosts, organisers, speakers and very generous participants at the Olive Branch in Carterton. Close to $3000 was raised!

For Immediate Release: July 22, 2025

Government faith initiative misaligned, say groups who declined to join

On Tuesday July 22, a government-sponsored ‘harmony initiative’ will be signed by some Muslim and Jewish groups. The initiative originated with government recognition that the consequences of Israel’s actions in Gaza are impacting Jewish and Muslim communities in Aotearoa, as well as the wider community.

While agreeing with that statement of purpose, other Muslim and Jewish groups have chosen to decline the invitation. They believe that the council, as formulated, is misaligned with its aims.

“Gaza is not a religious issue, and this has never been a conflict between our faiths,” Dr. Abdul Monem, a co-founder of ICONZ explains. “In Gaza we see a massive violation of international law with horrifying humanitarian consequences. We place Israel’s annihilating campaign against Gaza, the complicity of states and economies at the centre of our understanding—not religion. The first action to address the suffering in Gaza and ameliorate its effects here in Aotearoa must be government action. Our government needs to comply with international courts and act on this humanitarian calamity. That does not require a new council.”

The impetus for this initiative clearly linked international events with their local impacts, but the document does not mention Gaza among the council’s priorities. Signatories are not required to acknowledge universal human rights, nor the courts which have ruled so decisively and created obligations for the New Zealand government. Social distress is disconnected from its immediate cause.

The council is therefore open to parties who do not recognise the role of international humanitarian law in Palestine, nor the full human and political rights of their fellow New Zealanders.

Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices elaborates, “It has broad implications to overlook our rights and international humanitarian law. As currently formulated, the council includes no direct Palestinian representation. That’s not good enough. How can there be credible discussion of Aotearoa’s ethnic safety—let alone advocacy for international action—without Palestinians?

“Law, human rights and the dignity of every person’s life are not opinions. They are human entitlements and global agreements to which Aotearoa has bound itself. No person in Aotearoa should have to enter a room—especially a council created under government auspices—knowing that their fundamental rights will not be upheld. No one should have to begin by asking for that which is theirs.”

The groups outside this new council wholeheartedly wish to live in a harmonious society, but for them it is unclear why a new council of Jews and Muslims should represent the path to harmony.

“Advocacy that comes from faith can be a powerful force. We already work with numerous interfaith community initiatives, some formed at government initiative and waiting to really find their purpose,” says Dr Muhammad Sajjad Naqvi, President of ICONZ. “Those existing channels include more of the parties needed to address local threats, including Christian nationalism like that of Destiny Church. Perhaps government should resource those rather than starting something new.”

The groups who declined to join the council have warm and enduring relationships with FIANZ and Dayenu, who will take seats at this council table. All of the groups share common goals, but not this path.

—

More information about the organisations:

ICONZ is a National Umbrella Organization for Kiwi Shia Muslims for their unified voice. It is an organisation that unites all Muslims who are living in New Zealand and follow the school of the Ahlulbayt (PBUT) under ONE umbrella. ICONZ was established by Kiwi Muslims who have been born in New Zealand or born to migrants who chose New Zealand to be their home. For more, see www.iconz.org

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of Aotearoa Jews. It works for Jewish pluralism and anti-racism, and supports the work of Palestinians who seek liberation grounded in law and our equal human rights. For more, see www.ajv.org.nz

—

Joint Statement on the Harmony Accord Initiative

As community leaders and concerned citizens, we acknowledge the intent behind the Ministry for Ethnic Communities’ Harmony Accord initiative. However, after careful consideration, we have chosen not to participate in the current framework of the Accord for the following reasons:

1. No Need for a Separate Council Framing Muslim-Jewish Relations
   We do not see the necessity of establishing a specific council to foster peace and harmony between Muslim and Jewish communities in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our communities have long coexisted peacefully and framing our relationship as one in need of repair risks misrepresenting the reality on the ground.
2. Gaza: A Human Rights Issue, Not a Religious Conflict
   The ongoing crisis in Gaza is fundamentally a matter of human rights and international law. Reducing it to a religious dispute undermines the gravity of the humanitarian situation and distracts from the urgent need for justice and accountability.
3. Lack of Meaningful Consultation
   We are concerned that the Harmony Accord was developed without sufficient consultation with a broad and representative range of community voices. Genuine partnership requires inclusive dialogue and shared decision-making from the outset.
4. Call for Broader Faith-Based Inclusion
   For any government initiative to truly promote religious harmony, it must be inclusive of all faith communities. A more expansive and representative approach would send a stronger message of unity—especially in light of the rising hate speech and divisive rhetoric from groups such as Destiny Church.
5. Acknowledging the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza
   We stand in solidarity with all innocent civilians affected by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We urge the New Zealand government to take a principled stance in support of international humanitarian law and the protection of human life.
6. Our Commitment to Social Cohesion and Safety
   We remain steadfast in our commitment to social cohesion, interfaith understanding, and the safety and dignity of all people in Aotearoa. We will continue to work collaboratively across communities to uphold these values and ensure New Zealand remains a safe and inclusive home for everyone.

We welcome future opportunities for genuine engagement and inclusive dialogue that reflect the diversity and shared values of our nation.

Contact:

Dr Muhammad Sajjad Naqvi, info@iconz.org

Marilyn Garson, contact@ajv.org.nz

Jewishness is more than fear and Israel

In the last two stories I’ve seen on the Jewish community, Stuff has twice re-posted a harmful image of antisemitism and elicited the same sad tale of Judaism: fear and Israel. Second time, they used my name to let a spokesperson of the NZ Jewish Council position that group in the comfy middle of the spectrum.

First time, I wrote a letter to the editor. Second time, I wrote twice to the journalist, Philip Matthews, asking for space in which they or I could explain the content of Jewishness in a more holistic and meaningful way. I also noted that it is harmful to re-circulate racist images. After two weeks, Stuff declined to print my response. So here it is.

Dear Stuff,

In his interview of Ben Kepes, who is a regular contributor to Stuff as well as a spokesperson for the NZ Jewish Council (NZJC), Philip Matthews proposed this:

How can we describe the range of Jewish opinion in New Zealand? Can we say there is pro-Palestinian Marilyn Garson, author of Jewish, Not Zionist, at one end, and Zionism at the other?

Not quite, Kepes says.

“You have Marilyn Garson at one end, but you don’t have Zionism at the other because I would say the absolute vast majority of Jews in New Zealand are Zionists, as in they believe the state of Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jews. At the other end you probably have ultra right-wing Jews.”

Mr Matthews, I write ceaselessly about our equal human rights in this world, and the decisions of international law, and the dignity of every life. You have effectively placed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the far end of the Jewish spectrum. Can that really be the way you understand the Jewish community of Aotearoa?

I never use the word pro-Palestinian, because it imagines a false dichotomy. It overlooks the simple fact that two peoples will or will not find a way to live in justice. Neither people will vanquish the other and thrive alone. As I wrote to you, I reject identity-based politics and I pursue a future grounded in law and human rights; justice for two peoples.

Where shall we place the New Zealand Jewish Council (NZJC) on this spectrum? The NZJC calls for Aotearoa to defund universities which disagree with their definition of protest and “antisemitism”. They want to import Trump’s strategy to create a moral panic about protest; target Palestinians, dissenting Jews and friends; and override civil rights. To call for such anti-democratic politics in the name of the Jewish community is damaging and far from the middle of any spectrum.

The NZJC is unelected and has never sought to represent the whole of the community of which their constitution speaks. Last time the Regional Wellington Jewish Council met, it was roundly disavowed by the community and dissolved itself. Our media have never challenged this body. As they reveal their place in the Trumposphere, it becomes imperative that they not be allowed to drag the Jewish community into disrepute.

The media play into the Zionist framing of Jewishness each time they repeat that Jewish identity can be understood on a one-dimensional spectrum: pro- or anti-Zionist. That spectrum still pretends that being Jewish consists of one’s attitude toward Israel. That framing is a gift to Zionism, and it is an affront to the rich, plural inheritance of Jewishness.

Please oh please oh please, would any one of our media take note and stop reducing us to this flat, political existence?

II

Over and over, Stuff and others report on the Jewish community through antisemitism—or, more often, the “antisemitism” which labels anti-Zionism as a hatred of Jews. Those scare quotes refer to the blurring of protest into racism.

Lest anyone still doubt this, on July 1 2025, the Federal Court of Australia affirmed that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Justice Angus Stewart wrote that:

“The ordinary, reasonable listener would understand that not all Jews are Zionists or support the actions of Israel in Gaza and that disparagement of Zionism constitutes disparagement of a philosophy or ideology and not a race or ethnic group…

“Political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not by its nature criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity… The conclusion that it is not antisemitic to criticise Israel is the corollary of the conclusion that to blame Jews for the actions of Israel is antisemitic; the one flows from the other.”

It’s not that hard to remember that Zionism is an ideology while Jewish people are an ethno-religious community. It is critical to make that distinction, while Israel’s leaders stand charged with crimes against humanity and its military carries out plausible genocide, starvation, displacement and unspeakable cruelties.

Israel’s crimes make it the object of anger. Alternative Jewish Voices and our Palestinian partners work hard to remind everyone that effective protest targets the structures which prop up Israel’s illegal occupation and imperial violence. Structures—not labels, not Jews or Muslims or Palestinians—are the proper object of protest. Yet we see the spillover of anger against Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and those assumed to be Muslim. That spillover is actively baited by the far Right and disinformation networks.

If we want others to understand Jewishness, to respect and protect my faith among all the faiths, we need the media to do better. These uncritical Jewish Council stories serve neither Judaism nor safety.

What is Jewishness? There is a fine new identity flowering around the Jewish world. We are politically alive, spiritual or secular or cultural. Our Jewishness is not afraid to inhabit this world with all of its hard questions. Our identity is unrelated to Israel; our sources are far older. Our Jewish identity is often the source of our principles, and right now our principles break our hearts and bring into the street.

Don’t call us anti; call us liberatory. Don’t call us tragic; call us Tangata Te Tiriti. Don’t call us fringe because we are the future.

Alternative Jewish Voices is an original member of Global Jews for Palestine. Read and sign to support our vision for ethical, inclusive Jewish community in our Global Jewish Manifesto for Collective Liberation.

Marilyn Garson

July 18, 2025

A Global Jewish Manifesto for Collective Liberation

July 3, 2025

Introduction

Founded in 2019, Global Jews for Palestine is a coalition of 25 Jewish groups in 19 countries that are part of the rapidly growing Jewish movement for Palestinian rights. Our condemnation of Israel’s apartheid regime and its genocidal war on Gaza is unconditional. We stand in full and unequivocal solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for self-determination. Our position is a vital counterweight to the full-throated support for Israel voiced by legacy Jewish organizations worldwide. As Jews, we feel a unique responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions seek to crush the struggle for Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and undermine deeply-rooted Jewish social justice traditions. 

The vision of a viable and ethical Jewish alternative to the regressive, racist, and undemocratic forces that have controlled Jewish life for decades is within sight. We believe that now is the time to aggregate the voices and actions of Jews who dissent from the Zionist consensus, so that we may fight together for a viable and just future for all. 

Israel’s destruction of Gazan lives, communities, schools, universities and centres of culture, and the accompanying campaign to defeat the global movement for Palestinian freedom, have changed our world. The response to these atrocities has been extraordinary. Millions have marched weekly to condemn the genocide and to end Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Jews around the world have joined these protests and swelled the ranks of dissident Jewish organizations in unprecedented numbers. 

As the death toll in Gaza and the West Bank skyrockets, we are sickened by expressions of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia which flow unceasingly from pro-Israel Jewish institutions. Legacy Jewish groups continually launch vexatious lawfare attacks against activists, and unabashedly collaborate with McCarthyite efforts to silence pro-Palestinian voices on campuses and in civil society. Dissident Jews, many of whom are deeply involved in Jewish life, are not exempt from these assaults and have endured public harassment, expulsion from Jewish institutions, and personal attacks.

In too many Jewish institutions, a craven loyalty to the Jewish state has displaced both Jewish religious practice and the Jewish ethical tradition as the only test of who is an “authentic” Jew. As a result, many Jews who are horrified by Israel’s decimation of Gaza remain silent for fear of being labelled as antisemitic or as traitors to their community. Notably, this silence has been broken by many (mostly young) Jews who oppose the political project of a state dedicated to Jewish supremacy. Dissenting Jews are uniting to denounce the organizations and all those offering unconditional material and ideological support to Israel as it annihilates Palestinian life.

For many of us, our Jewish identity is the wellspring of our progressive politics. We cannot cede the future to those Jewish institutions that embrace violence, hatred, and genocide as core Jewish values. Now is the time to build inclusive, ethical Jewish institutions and to nurture alliances with oppressed, colonized and marginalized peoples. 

Global Jews for Palestine offers this manifesto in that spirit. 

1. Dissent from the institutional Jewish community’s uncritical pro-Israel stance is an ethical and fundamentally Jewish response to Israel’s violations of international law and its abrogation of Jewish values. There is no possible justification for the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing being carried out in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 
2. We affirm and honour the historical and contemporary variants of Jewish life, some of which flourished even under the shadow of annihilation. Jewish dispersion has been central to Jewish intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development and to multidirectional flows of knowledge in every sphere. This dynamic is tragically diminished when the State of lsrael claims dominion over Jewish political, emotional, and intellectual life. 
3. Ideologically and materially in thrall to Israel, an elite donor class in some countries and state-funded bodies in other countries, dominate Jewish life and narrow the political and cultural borders of Jewish life worldwide. In the absence of democratic communal structures, no Jewish institution can credibly claim to speak for all Jews. While democracy and inclusion should be foundational precepts for Jewish communal institutions, the opposite is the case. Legacy Jewish and Zionist organizations are unlikely to cede power by embracing inclusive structures and justice-based politics. Therefore, we welcome and encourage the creation of new communal formations that centre justice-oriented Judaism, Jewish social and ideological diversity, collective liberation and solidarity with Palestine. We need to ensure financial support for a wide spectrum of Jewish initiatives, including schools, camps, and other cultural, spiritual and political institutions that offer alternatives to an Israel-centred Jewish life.
4. Jews and our institutions worldwide need to learn, acknowledge, and teach their communities about the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) – the displacement, dispossession, and dispersion of much of the Indigenous Palestinian population as a result of the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. Jewish history includes similar atrocities. Understanding the parallels between these histories can help us gain moral clarity in the present. Jews need to come to terms with the ways we are implicated in this history through our willful ignorance, material support, and an appalling and uncritical endorsement of Israel’s actions. Reckoning with this history is key to achieving justice for the Palestinian people and creating justice-oriented Jewish communities. 
5. The near-total domination of Jewish communal life by a wealthy donor class has diminished our capacity for critical thinking. We must listen to the voices of Palestinian, Jewish and other scholars and communal leaders who are sounding the alarm about the ethical failures and deadly consequences of Zionism and Jewish supremacism. We must acknowledge the intense debates currently raging among Jewish studies, Holocaust, and genocide scholars about issues such as Holocaust commemoration, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish identity. 
6. Antisemitism is rising around the world. We disagree with those who view antisemitism as an exceptional form of hatred, separate and distinct from other forms of racism. The foregrounding of antisemitism as the paradigmatic form of racism, and of the Holocaust as an exceptional form of genocide, undermines the possibility of Jewish solidarity and co-resistance with the struggles of Palestinians and other marginalized, colonized and racialized groups. Antisemitism must be opposed on general anti-racist principles, in solidarity with other antiracist struggles and in concert with the principles of human rights and equality for all people. Jewish safety will only be achieved through solidarity among those who face injustice. 

If you agree, please sign here.

Register here for our webinar, presented by Haymarket Books. Speakers from four continents will discuss this vision, and we are thrilled that Gabor Maté will join us! In Aotearoa, the webinar will take place on Friday, July 25 at 7:00 am.

Alternative Jewish Voices is an original member of Global Jews for Palestine.

Please note that the time in Aotearoa will be July 25, 7:00 am.

Please join us for a discussion with Global Jews for Palestine, a coalition of anti-Zionist Jewish groups from 20 countries across the globe. Speakers will discuss our collective responsibility as anti-Zionist Jews at this urgent moment. We are also thrilled Gabor Mate is joining us.

Webinar information and registration:

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/haymarketbooks/1761071

About the speakers:

Marilyn Garson (Aotearoa / New Zealand – Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices, ajv.org.nz) lived in Gaza four years. She is the author of “Still Lives – A Memoir Of Gaza” and “Jewish, Not Zionist”.
Sheryl Nestel (Canada Independent Jewish Voices Canada ) is a sociologist and long-time Palestine solidarity activist.
Wieland Hoban (Germany Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost) is a composer, translator and author of “German Apartheid Politics”.
Iván Zeta (Argentina Judíes x Palestina) is a left-wing activist who works on digital communications.

Closing: @Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian physician and best-selling author, is renowned for his work on addiction, trauma, and childhood development and is a passionate spokesperson in support of justice for the Palestinian people.

See you there!

A study published through the Harvard Dataverse uses location mapping and data to assert that nearly one-fifth of the population is missing from the Gaza Strip. Of Gaza’s 2023 population of 2.227 million, 377,000 people no longer appear. They are absent. Gaza’s population appears to be 1.85 million.

Those of us with Gazan friends have struggled to reconcile the scale of our friends’ losses with the official counts of Gaza’s death toll. For the numbers to make sense, our friends’ families would have to have been disproportionately targeted – or the number of deaths would have to be far greater than those counted by Gaza’s health ministry.

This measure of missing population makes a great deal more sense. It also lets us include those who have been forced to leave, taking on crippling debt for the sake of their children’s safety. How many, we do not know – but Harvard’s measure embraces their absence. Anyone who has been physically to places waking up from genocide knows that a pervasive, silent sense of absence precedes meaningful numbers. Spacial mapping captures that. Israel is emptying Gaza of its people.

Yet again, Alternative Jewish Voices implores our government to stand up and act on what we know of Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide. It is no excuse for our government to say that we cannot end the genocide alone. For two thousand years a Jewish adage has reminded us that we are obliged to undertake even the work we cannot complete.

It matters to state who we are and attach ourselves to morality, international humanitarian law and human dignity. It matters to every one of our battered souls that we do what can be done to stop the genocide taking place on our watch.

Alternative Jewish Voices

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 19 / 20, 2025

Contact: Global Jews for Palestine

globaljewishcollective@gmail.com

Israel’s terrorist attack on Iran: for what?

For 20 months, Israel’s government and occupation forces have pursued a campaign of genocide in Gaza, interspersed with destruction and land grabs in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria. Now Israel has indulged its long-held desire to attack Iran, a nation of 92 million people.

Israel claims that this was a pre-emptive attack, a necessary act of self-defence to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. US State Department intelligence findings flatly contradict that claim. While it calls Iran a nuclear threat, Israel is the only Middle Eastern state with nuclear weapons – undeclared, uninspected, and therefore all the more dangerous.

We, Jewish groups in 19 countries, believe that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu acted to divert attention from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and its daily attacks and land seizures in the West Bank, and to extend Israel’s imperial domination over more of the Middle East. He further seeks to extend his own rule (and evade jail). Netanyahu has long wanted to lure the US directly into war against Iran. Ultimately, he seeks to bring down the Iranian government, in denial of the right of the Iranian people to chart their own way forward.

Shortly before it attacked Iran, the IDF virtually cut Gaza’s last communications and imposed a complete siege on the West Bank. Hourly, it pursues genocide in darkness. On June 20, Al Jazeera counted over 170 Palestinians killed in Gaza this week, while they were trying to obtain the food that they have a right to obtain.

It is too easy to condemn only Netanyahu, who is already on trial domestically and wanted internationally for crimes of genocide. The problem is wider. This regional war-crime spree is inherent in the logic of Zionism. Since 1947, the Zionist project has systematically expelled and murdered Palestinians. It has pursued territorial expansion and regional domination inspired by Western imperialism, while claiming victimhood as a persecuted Jewish collective.

Israel’s role remains dependent on the full support – diplomatic, military and economic – of Western powers. Donald Trump, ever ready to claim destruction as his own, openly refers to Israel’s attack as an action ‘we’ undertook. The German Chancellor says that Israel is ‘doing dirty work for all of us.’

Global Jews for Palestine rejects Israel’s atrocities and its racist narrative. This widening suffering and chaos will continue until all countries make it end. Governments must cease arming and justifying Israel’s crimes, and instead they must impose effective sanctions on Israel. As the world’s highest court has advised, we call on our governments to stop normalising and start bringing this disaster to its only credible end: ceasefire, accountability, and justice which realises the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

We, Jews from around the world urge all governments to abandon the racist, reckless project of Zionism and start the urgent work of justice. We pledge to continue and intensify our efforts to end occupation, genocide and the wider military adventures which threaten to engulf us all.

—

MORE ABOUT GLOBAL JEWS FOR PALESTINE

We are Jews from many countries, who are members of local, national and international networks and organizations. We are multi-ethnic and multigenerational and our members embrace a broad range of viewpoints on Jewish religious and ethical traditions. 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 and colonialism.

We believe that it is our particular responsibility to challenge Jewish organizations whose alliances and actions undermine Palestinian human and national rights, promote Jewish exceptionalism, and overturn Jewish social justice traditions. At the heart of our work is the fight for Palestinian liberation and the struggle for a world free of racial and ethnic hierarchy, colonial domination, and unbridled militarism.

For 100 days Israel has starved the people of Gaza openly, in plain sight.

This 100th day is a Tuesday morning, and already this is a week of bitter pills to swallow. Gazan Palestinians continue to be pressed into ever smaller spaces. They continue to be driven toward the faint prospect of food. To save their children from starvation, they make themselves vulnerable to the deadly force that surrounds the GHF choke points. What should they do, starve or be shot?

The Guardian and others report that the UK and France have backpedalled and will not recognise the State of Palestine at the upcoming conference. Instead, they will talk about the concessions and steps that Palestinians should take to assure Israel, such that Israel will not want to obstruct their political rights.

Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has announced that the US will no longer pursue a Palestinian state in the land of Palestine. Any Palestinian state will be carved out of ‘a Muslim country’.

Aotearoa joined other countries in sanctioning two Israeli ministers this morning. Good, thank you, but even this bloodless tweak must be accompanied by assurances to the Israeli people.

Who will assure the Palestinian people this week? Who will comfort the children of Gaza this week? Gazan Palestinians are starving and being killed with impunity – on their own land, which is called Palestine and is recognised as such by ¾ of the member states of the United Nations.

Alternative Jewish Voices regards this ongoing genocide, this political farce with horror and heartbreak for our Palestinian whānau. This week forces us to understand a little more about being Palestinian, because these cycles of hope and cowardly abandonment are not new for Palestinians.

We send our deepest compassion to each Palestinian who is struggling alongside their Gazan family, and suffering these bitter setbacks. We will be with you for as long as it takes.

We urge every friend of Palestine to think sustainably about solidarity. That is what these setbacks demand. We cannot only bank the fiery rage that burns itself out. If we are to stand beside Palestinians through the long work of realising their rights and national aspirations, we need to act with the care, the comfort, the creativity and consistency that will endure.

Alternative Jewish Voices

We have rallied, written and shouted for the restoration of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. We urge our government to help preserve UNRWA, the lynchpin of Gaza’s humanitarian structure. Israel is bent on preventing UNRWA’s humanitarian capacity from being used.

We do not spend much time on the reality of this humanitarian provision. What is it that Israel is seeking to dismantle?

Humanitarianism is an ethic that places the value of human life at the centre of emergency (here, warfare). Assistance is prioritised according to need, and delivered within the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. In Gaza’s daily desperation for food, we see the abysmal absence of these principles.

As a response to emergency, humanitarian assistance is limited – a bandaid, not a cure. Humanitarians will not give Palestinians a state. Assistance neither prevents nor ends wars. It seeks to limit the harms of war, and it can only operate in the space agreed by all armed parties.

Yet humanitarianism acts on our human dignity in a way that I find enormously valuable. As an aspiration, it is the very best bandaid we’ve got in a world where we cannot prevent armed violence. Personally, the rights-based principles that give rise to humanitarian action also give me a guardrail to hold back the absolutes which make our differences harder to resolve. Absolutes can creep into any movement, sliding from principle to implacable rage that suggests we cannot live together.

It takes a hopeful belief in humanity to say that now, which Scott Anderson shares.

Scott was the deputy director of UNRWA while I was in Gaza. I reported to him operationally for two years. He tolerated my response to United Nations bureaucracy, which involved unplugging my desk phone for, um, a while. Scott thrived in emergency, and led the UNRWA emergency operations room through the 2014 onslaught. I saw his physical bravery when we visited shelters together.

In November 2023, Scott went back. He was UNRWA’s director in Gaza through January 2025. This week we spoke about those 15 months, and only very briefly about Israel’s resumption of bombing after March 2025.

The 2014 war had been, Scott said, a high water mark of Israel’s willingness to coordinate with the UN on matters like humanitarian pauses (agreed cessations of fire which allow people to move and be supplied with food safely). Israel’s choices were now driven by anger, and some were “indefensible. It’s just a very difficult time right now and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to find safety for people who are innocent in Gaza.”

UNRWA has long been Gaza’s largest provider of safe shelter but this time, “most, if not all, UNRWA shelters have been hit … I think that when it was announced that UNRWA staff were part of October 7th, it took on a new dimension. I personally think it’s a way to put psychological pressure on the [Palestinian] community that UNRWA isn’t safe anymore. One of the [Israeli government’s] stated goals, besides eradicating Hamas, is to get rid of UNRWA.”

While Scott was there, “well over two hundred” of his UNRWA staff were killed “that we knew of. I’m sure there are some that are in the rubble, that we just aren’t aware of … And it wasn’t just us. [The IDF aerial strike which killed seven staff members of] World Central Kitchen was a kind of inflection point.”

After staff of other agencies were shot at while trying to retrieve bodies, “We did stuff we didn’t have to do before. We collected remains of people. It’s something I felt was important – first, for our own humanity but also for our Palestinian colleagues. Whatever we do in this life, we deserve a dignified burial at the end of it, right?”

I asked how (for lack of a better phrase) he hadn’t gotten himself killed. “It was dangerous. There were probably three or four times when I wasn’t sure we were going to make it out.”

We talked about the strangeness of Gaza’s once-familiar landscape. I have seen what remains of our offices. Mine is a shambles with no ceiling or front walls. My former apartment building is dust. Seeing those places is like driving through Shuja’iyya after 2014. I couldn’t even count the streets to locate myself, because there were no streets to discern.

“You’re right,” he said. “I went to Gaza City and the driver said, ‘Look, there’s Beirut Tower.’ I didn’t know where I was. There’s so much damage in the frame of reference. It’s just gone.”

To me, the daily horror stories from Gaza have sounded as if the whole notion of de-confliction – coordination intended to keep routes or places safe for the delivery of aid – has broken down. “No,” Scott shook his head, “I don’t believe that. I think that it didn’t work particularly well, and it really didn’t work particularly well with certain units of the IDF … You could see, they were scared … I don’t believe anybody’s out to hurt humanitarians, because it helps in most conflicts.”

So how did he cope, as the leader of people who needed to move through that environment? “It’s a pretty fine line between being pragmatic and principled, right? The only real leverage the UN has is saying that we’ll stop, but we won’t, and we all knew we wouldn’t.”

Is Israel’s flagrant disregard of humanitarian space and entitlements an aberration or a precedent? “I hope it’s an aberration, but I think that the way the humanitarian community functions needs to be re-examined as well. I do believe that. I don’t think the model still works [in] the more violent places where we’re working … The war has become so much more asymmetrical that it’s much harder now to protect sites and people.” When superpowers bomb a confined community, the very idea of reciprocal need falls away. The humanitarian risk and need are as one-sided as the weaponry.

I asked about the extent of Palestinian hardship during Scott’s time. Mutual assistance has always been integral to Gaza, but there are also networks and clans which profit from scarcity. “I do think that there was a sense of helping each other, but there was also opportunistic profiteering – which is the reality in most war zones… And frankly I remain shocked that there hasn’t been a pandemic or something. I think it’s because people are very intelligent, and very resilient. But it’s really pretty remarkable.”

Through it all, I have struggled to understand intention. Israel’s cabinet is brazen and fascist, and we have all read horrifying individual statements of genocidal intent from others in and out of office. We respond to that, because those speakers are culpable, and because we are also doing politics. But how should we speak beyond that? We have seen the harm done when all of Gaza is blurred into a single, militarised object; willfully denying Palestinians’ civilian protections. What is the converse of that?

Scott negotiated and interacted for years with Israel’s occupation institutions and military leaders. When I spoke about Israel’s plans for Gaza, he looked dubious. “I don’t know if it’s a plan. I often feel they’re a little schizophrenic when it comes to Palestinians and Gaza. They want them to leave, but they also don’t want to let them leave.”

So, for 19 months, two million people have been driven north and south, north and south. Presently they are forced south, pushed into smaller and smaller spaces and drawn desperately by the magnet of food. And now there is Trump and apparently, the most malicious in Israel’s government have carte blanche. Of the Israel / US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Scott says, “It’s clear that this is an attempt to sidestep the humanitarian principles, which doesn’t seem to have worked very well. The consulting group and head of the GHF have both withdrawn. This is a litmus test, certainly, and other countries – Russia for example – are watching.”

Scott lived nine years and seven months in Gaza, across several senior roles. Israel has refused to grant him entry in another UN capacity within Israel, because “they didn’t want it to look like UNRWA was sneaking back in.”

Of his decade, he says, “I think we all came and did what we could.”

One of the great privileges of my own years in Gaza was the ability to cross boundaries and listen again. It does not diffuse my outrage. After all, there will be people sitting in cafes in Tel Aviv while Gaza starves. But crossing boundaries complicates what I understand of this as a human deed.

Scott leaves believing that, “From a distance, everything looks pretty black and white, but up close, it’s all shades of grey … You have to really dig into it to understand. If you’re a friend of Palestine, you should visit Israel and try to understand. And if you’re a friend of Israel, you should visit Palestine and try to understand. You have to have empathy and understanding, that’s what I would say [although] the scales are different.”

Scott has not said the word ‘genocide’. Organisations play different roles and speak within different constraints. Regarding the world court case against Israel for crimes of genocide, “The work UNRWA did in compiling statistics was used by South Africa in raising the case to the court. [UNRWA’s] primary role was documentation and advocacy.”

UNRWA’s tireless, principled advocacy is ongoing, based on the rights of Palestinians and on ground truth. This week’s statement by UNRWA’s Commissioner-General was sent under the title “aid distribution has become a death trap”.

Marilyn Garson

Author’s note – this poem is a cry from the depth of injustice, told through a child’s voice raised in unbearable grief and fury. It is not just a lament; it is a moral and emotional appeal and a call for action. To politicians, community leaders, influencers, artists, and every person living in a safe and free society to understand: your indifference is murderous. Use the freedom you have; or risk losing it.

If Wishes Were Winds