Morgan Elzey is a young restaurateur and activist in LA. Weiss met him at JFK last December en route to Gaza and Elzey told him about his progress. Convinced that Palestinian solidarity offers young idealistic Jews a way to be engaged in world problems, in a great Jewish tradition, Weiss urged Elzey, at left in Cairo, to write up his story.
I was raised as a Reform Jew. We went to temple only a half dozen times a year. I attended Hebrew school throughout middle school and then Hebrew high school two or three nights a week during my older years. Judaism wasn’t something that governed my life; I never really subscribed to the idea of God and was turned off to sitting and standing simply on the cue of the rabbi. I was in it for the family, the excuses for large gatherings and dinners, the sense of community it provided. As time went on, in describing who I was, I began to use the phrase "Jewish-by-association".
Because I didn’t have the background in the Palestinian struggle, I had no strong feeling of holding Israel accountable or for the world community to stand up in opposition to the oppressive Israeli military machine. For if I had, I may not have been able to work at the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), a Jewish fundraising non-profit, for nine months during 2007/2008. Many co-workers were Orthodox Jews, who had a significantly large community where I grew up in Northeastern New Jersey in a suburb of New York City. At work, we got off early on Fridays in observance of Shabbat and had many vacation days in observance of the plethora of Jewish holidays. The employees of the UJA, whether Jewish or not, had unflinching support for Israel. Fortunately, all of the people working there were wonderfully-pleasant people and rarely was anything overtly bigoted or unkind uttered. It was while working there that I began to search for more immediate ways to make an impact in this world that I care so much about and eventually found Common Ground Relief in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which changed my life.
It was there that I began a serious education in the Palestinian struggle. I had heard (read on the internet) small bits about resistance the world over through the years, but wouldn’t consider myself "in the know". At Common Ground, though, I was quickly immersed into the world of the Black Panthers (our founder was a former Black Panther in New Orleans), Palestinians, and other groups which, for largely political purposes, have been forced to live marginalized, difficult lives. Before I left for good in November ‘08, I had a sit down with the founder of CG, Malik Rahim. A dreadlocked man in his early 60s with a slow deep drawl, Malik and I couldn’t have come from more different places. I told him how amazing it was that a tall Jewish kid from the NJ suburbs could find common ground with an ex-con Black panther from New Orleans. And I thanked him for enlightening me, saving me, from my privilege bubble.
Two months earlier I had decided to finally, after several false starts, embark on my Birthright. I was nervous that my two good friends and I would be outcast as "non-believers". Fortunately we had been put on the most liberal trip with what has to be the most liberal tour guide Birthright has at their disposal. For those who don’t know, Birthright is a wonderful, flawlessly-functioning effort to persuade young American Jewry of the benefits of life in Israel, our "homeland". We are supposed to fall in love with the land, fall in love with an Israeli, and make Palestine our home. And I must say, after 10 days, many in our group were convinced that they knew everything they needed to know and were ready to make aliyah. Days earlier, we had done team-building activities while separated into groups, each group paired with an IDF soldier, and asked to choose the ideals most vital to our daily "Jewish" existence. Almost all of the Americans chose things like "family", "music", "culture" or "tradition". Almost every soldier, unsurprisingly, chose either "IDF" or "State of Israel". There was a notion that we were a different kind of Jew than our IDF counterparts. Earlier that day, while over-looking Jerusalem, a truly magical, spiritual place, we were told that we were forbidden to enter the Muslim section of the ancient, walled Old City. We would, we were told without hesitation, be attacked or killed. Another time, as we sat looking past a valley at the hills of Lebanon, our (liberal) tour guide used "primitive" to describe the people of Lebanon. Though this was not his view, he went on to describe how they had squandered all of the good will, financial donations, and political capital invested in them by Israel and her friends. I, and several other participants, found this too much and called him out on his hypocrisy. It was rare that overtly racist and privileged sentiments such as these came out while in Israel, though with them I felt that there was this seething undercurrent of fear of the other, of negativity, of hatred, of…..something ugly.
When I was a child and into my 20s, Zionism was present in my life inasmuch as the State of Israel was praised in Hebrew School and during my time at the UJA. My friends were never religious and we never really talked about it…we didn’t really know or care much. It is only since expressing my feelings regarding Israeli apartheid and the announcement of my intentions to go to Gaza that people’s true motivations and feelings came out. A good friend emailed me saying, "It should be sufficient to say that I strongly oppose this, that I see your actions as a direct threat to my family’s safety, and that this kind of shit prevents Palestinian re-unification and therefore makes it extremely unlikely that a Palestinian state will be established." Others asked me if I still could even consider myself a Jew and told me that I was a disgrace to my religion, my "people". Zionism (Jewish nationalism) has reared its ugly head in ways and in people I never thought imaginable. To question Israel is to be anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish. Apparently, to simply be Jewish, regardless of one’s religious tilt, was to be Zionist. I guess I missed the memo.
The scorn and condemnation I’ve received from my extended Jewish community has been utterly uninspiring and disappointing, not to mention outright offensive. For expressing views different from his own, and for what he refers to as "spew an amazing amount of propaganda that is rarely even disguised by your own words", a friend of mine has determined that I have been brainwashed by the activist community. People who, for all intents and purposes, I am on the same political page with AND who are also Jewish all seem to have the same thing in common: unwavering support for Israel and zero sympathy or hope for the position Palestinians are currently in. What’s more, even if they acknowledge that they "feel" for the Palestinian community, there exists little room in their mind for someone to work towards a conclusion of peace, especially if that work involves "tricking" people to lend financial support and travel to Gaza in a show of solidarity. In almost every case, the outrage and anger directed at me has come from the Jewish community. It is disappointing, to say the least, that such intelligent and privileged people could, at time, have such little empathy for those worse off than themselves. This, unfortunately, isn’t uncommon among the privileged.
I could go on and on, but I won’t. (To the class) I really appreciate all your interest in this issue. The first step, which many, including those in the Jewish community, have begun to do, is to acknowledge that there is a problem and not to gloss over it as a "millennia-old religious conflict." I am not a self-hating Jew. I do not think all Jews are racist and bigoted. I also do not believe that to be Jewish is to be entirely supportive of the State of Israel. The kind of hate that has been directed at me – not because I shot rockets into Israel but simply because I express different views and that I traveled to an unfortunately controversial place – has, in its extreme-ness, caught me off guard. I expected outrage. I did not expect to lose a friend.
